Public housing residents react to director's raise

[Times photo: Scott Keeler] On her porch at Rainbow Village in Largo, Katie Lockwood has her hair done by daughter Nichole Dorsey. Lockwood criticized the Pinellas County Housing Authority director's 66 percent pay raise.

By EDIE GROSS

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2000

Barbara Webb tired of waiting for the grassy lawns she said the Pinellas County Housing Authority promised to plant around her apartment complex.

She tucked blue, pink and yellow plastic flowers into the sand outside her French Villas apartment to pretty up the place.

"For three years we've been promised yards. They keep saying, "It's right around the corner,' " said Webb, who waited two months for her new wheelchair ramp and says she still is waiting for safety bars to be installed in her shower.

There have been a few improvements during the last year, said Webb, a resident of the Pinellas Park complex for nine years. Outdoor lighting was added, and residents got new kitchen cabinets.

But she could not understand how the addition of a few amenities could earn the housing authority director a 66 percent salary increase. Helen Piloneo's pay was boosted from $73,839 to $122,634 last week by authority board members who said she accomplished a lot in her first year as director.

"If she was making $70,000, she was lucky. Seventy thousand is a lot of money," said an incredulous Webb. "What does she want that she needs to get more money? She doesn't need a raise."

Reactions were similar among public housing residents throughout Pinellas County last week. Most said they would have liked to have seen more improvements to their homes before the authority director earned a raise -- and even then, they would not have recommended such a large one.

Even those who had no complaints about their living conditions credited local apartment managers rather than Piloneo and other senior authority officials, who work out of an office on Garden Avenue in Clearwater.

"We don't have ties with the main office," said Helen Davis, a 15-year resident of French Villas. "Everything's taken care of by the local office."

Piloneo was the authority's assistant executive director of finance for 18 years before being promoted to director in February 1999.

The Pinellas County Housing Authority owns or manages 1,342 public and affordable housing units.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cited the agency in January 1998 for what it said amounted to mistreatment of African-American and disabled residents. The authority was not allowed to lease apartments for a year.

Piloneo took over the agency just after that sanction was lifted. Since then, the authority has tried to integrate its complexes more, provide accommodations for disabled residents and fill vacancies faster.

There appears to be some progress. The authority's vacancy rate for public housing apartments dropped from 40 percent in August to 23 percent in March after employees started working six-day weeks to move families off a waiting list and into homes.

In January 1998, 87 percent of the residents at French Villas were white. Now, 33 percent of the community is black or Asian.

But the figures at predominantly black Rainbow Village in Largo and predominantly white Crystal Lakes Manor, Lakeside Terrace and Heatherwood in Pinellas Park have not changed that much.

Public housing residents, who earned an average annual income of $7,300 in 1998, said they were stunned by Piloneo's large raise.

"That's too much," said Rainbow Village resident Katie Lockwood. "She shouldn't be making that much. I'm just telling you straight up."

Liz Thomas said the money might have been better spent on housing authority residents.

"She should just take part of that 66 percent raise and pay someone to come out here and help some of these senior citizens," Thomas said. "I believe in people doing a good job and getting a good salary, but that seems a bit much. I don't think people up in the White House get that much of a boost."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.