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A private pickle
By LEONORA LaPETER ST. PETERSBURG -- A year ago, the St. Petersburg Housing Authority became the largest agency in the state to have all of its public housing run by private companies. The move has run into trouble. In two cases, private companies managing James Park, Clearview Park and the Graham-Rogall public housing complexes have left after disagreements with the Housing Authority. In another dispute, the manager of construction at the Jordan Park complex has walked off the job over $50,000 in unpaid bills and has filed a lawsuit. While Housing Authority officials say the companies did nothing illegal or intentionally wrong, the controversies have hampered efforts to make St. Petersburg a showcase for privatized public housing. "When we're not as successful as we'd hoped, it does feed into the opponents' viewpoint," said Darrell Irions, executive director of the St. Petersburg Housing Authority. "But I haven't swayed my viewpoint. These have all been good companies that tried their best. We've been in this over 60 years. They've been in it five years. You've got to give private companies time to adapt." In St. Petersburg, Irions and the appointed housing authority oversee a rental voucher program, as well as the private managers of the city's 900 or so public housing units. The private companies are hired to handle everything from collecting monthly rent to mowing the grass and repairing units. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has encouraged housing authorities to privatize, but only two other Florida cities -- Winter Haven and Winter Park -- have gone as far as St. Petersburg. Some authorities have hired private companies to take care of maintenance or security. Others have avoided it altogether. "I like to be in control of things I'm responsible for," said Sam Brunson, executive director of the Crestview Housing Authority and a former president of the Florida Association of Housing and Redevelopment. "Privatization scares me a little bit because then I lose control of who's working." Irions and his top managers said that neither of the recently departed companies -- H.J. Russell and Co. of Atlanta and National Housing Group, Corp. of Miami -- left housing complexes in disarray. Most of the problems involved incomplete record-keeping, which can sometimes result in the housing authority's being fined or not receiving its money from HUD. National Housing Group, which managed Graham-Rogall until the end of March, told Housing Authority officials a few months ago it would probably have an $80,000 cost overrun for the facility this year. When the housing authority asked to see the company's books, Irions said, the company balked. "That's absolutely incorrect," said Maggy Pedraza, president of National Housing Group. "It was a minor overrun. I don't have the numbers in front of me. The Housing Authority just had an inexperienced person reviewing the work, making bad recommendations." National Housing had a one-year contract with an option to renew. Pedraza said her company chose not to renew the contract. The Housing Authority has appointed Lane Co. of Atlanta to oversee Graham-Rogall until it can bid the contract to a new company. Sharon Collins, a resident leader at the facility for the elderly and disabled, said National Housing Group seemed to want to improve things. But she liked it best when the Housing Authority was in charge. "We've had National Housing Group and now we have an interim manager group, and in three to five months, there'll be another management group," she said. "And that's kind of unsettling for the residents to keep having so many changes." One of the complaints about the private managers is that they start out with a bang and fizzle out over time. That's the way Latarshia Pryor, 29, a mother of four, saw H.J. Russell and Co., the company that managed James Park, Clearview Park and, at one point, Jordan Park. "Whenever things got broken in the house, it took forever to get them fixed," said Pryor, a James Park resident who works as a receptionist at a marketing company. But Pryor said she preferred the private manager to the Housing Authority, which "never lifted a finger," she said. The Housing Authority chose not to give the contract for managing James Park and Clearview Park to H.J. Russell and Co. at the end of February. For one, the recordkeeping was, in some cases, poor, officials said. The company also seemed to have trouble getting money from Atlanta to repair items in a timely manner, Irions said. "The people on site weren't authorized to write a check, and that's where the breakdown occurred," Irions said. Officials with H.J. Russell and Co. could not be reached for comment. Lane Co. won the contract to run Clearview Park, James Park and Jordan Court beginning March 1. Irions said he has learned lessons from the hasty departures. In the future, he will talk more about training the private company employees before the contracts are signed. "When you manage all public housing, it's a whole different ballgame," Irions said. "Public housing families have their own set of issues to deal with just being poor. It compounds it when you stack poor people on top of poor people. You learn pretty quickly it's not the same game you've been doing in the private sector." In the Housing Authority's other major dispute, Greater Miami Neighborhoods, manager of the $27-million Jordan Park construction project, was overseeing all aspects of the construction until a few weeks ago, when the company walked off the job. Russell Sibley, senior vice president of the nonprofit affordable housing developer, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The authority disputes that it owes the company $50,000, saying it withheld the money because the work was not completed. The authority has taken over most of Greater Miami Neighborhoods' duties. The 94-building project is about one-third complete and is expected to be done by the end of the year. The authority still faces a lawsuit by several residents of Jordan Park. Recently, a judge in the case disqualified the residents' attorney, Geneva Forrester, from the 2-year-old case because one of her former employees was at one point a Housing Authority employee. Forrester said recently that she will ask the judge to reconsider that decision because the residents will have a hard time getting another lawyer to take their case. Some residents say the authority has mismanaged construction of the project and is building a dangerous drainage lake at Jordan Park, where children can drown. The community of colorful Craftsman and Colonial-style duplexes, triplexes, apartments and homes gets mixed reviews from the residents who live there. Alberta Davis, who has lived at Jordan Park since 1982, said her hunter green duplex is "a big, big improvement" over what she had in the former Jordan Park. But some residents say the old development was sturdier. "These are nice for now, but they're not going to last for 15 years," said Ashia Holmes, 20, a credit counselor who has lived at Jordan Park for 10 years. "They're paper thin. I feel like they put them together too quick."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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