A Times Editorial

Public housing problems

The St. Petersburg Housing Authority has more problems than it wanted to admit but now it needs to accept it and correct it.

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 1, 2000

St. Petersburg Housing Authority executive director Darrell J. Irions predicted that the final version of a federal audit of his agency would be considerably less critical than the preliminary report issued in April. He was wrong. Although a few elements of the final report were toned down, the audit still documents "significant (management) weaknesses in all areas," including: faulty bidding practices and inadequate documentation in the awarding of millions of dollars in contracts; the misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for other purposes; the mismanagement of the authority's rental voucher program, resulting in a failure to serve almost 200 families eligible for help.

These and other problems documented in the audit deserve immediate attention. The initial reactions of Irions and some members of the authority's board were unsatisfactory. "I don't think it's that big of a deal," Irions said on the day the report was released.

However, Irions now acknowledges that the audit revealed substantial problems. He says flaws in the authority's bidding process, including the "appearance of favoritism" noted in the report, stem from his efforts to privatize many of his office's functions. He says he already has begun taking steps to make that process more fair and more transparent.

Irions also acknowledged the cloud over authority general counsel Ricardo Gilmore. HUD officials say Gilmore, who also has represented the Tampa Housing Authority and several others in the area, created a conflict of interest for himself through his work with private non-profit companies set up by indicted former THA executive director Audley Evans. Gilmore also represents two for-profit businesses owned by St. Petersburg authority vice chairwoman Lorian Williams. Irions notes that the St. Petersburg authority, unlike Tampa's, was the subject of a management audit, not a criminal investigation. However, the sweeping federal charges brought against Evans and other Tampa housing officials in April point up the pitfalls of privatization.

Irions needs to show results in a hurry. The authority's ambitious renovation of the Jordan Park public housing complex has turned into a political and administrative nightmare. The authority has to do a better job of meeting the needs, and answering the concerns, of dozens of families displaced by the project.

Meanwhile, St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer and other city officials should arrange for better public oversight of the housing authority's work. Several of the current authority board members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor and approved by city council, are longtime civic leaders. However, for a variety of reasons -- including illness, inattention and incompetence -- some members have failed their oversight duties.

Housing authority officials have a broad responsibility to the taxpayers who help to subsidize their work, but their greatest responsibility is to the needy families dependent on their help. Too often, beginning long before Irions arrived in town, area authorities have breached that trust. We'll soon know whether Irions and his staff are serious about correcting the flaws documented in the federal report -- and about beginning to correct that history of failure.

Tampa's Riverview Terrace is an example of what's wrong with government housing. It's unhabitable and harmful to the area.

No human should live the way they live at Tampa's Riverview Terrace, a public housing project near the Hillsborough River. Pipes leak, rats abound, broken screen doors hang from the dull pink brick. With a thriving drug trade and plywood for windows, Riverview Terrace is a place the government would shut down, fine the owner and seize the property -- if it didn't own the buildings.

It has become cliche that our government is the biggest slumlord in almost every major city. In the 1970s and '80s, Riverview Terrace, and other projects like it, became a prophecy of crime and drugs because the strategy was to contain violence within the housing projects. But that has changed. Now the federal government is moving away from the monolith mentality, giving residents a voucher and the choice to live in single-family homes. And cities are re-investing in the urban core, hoping to boost the tax base, improve security and ease the drain on public services by diversifying the makeup of older neighborhoods.

Demolishing Riverview Terrace is smart but only the first step in the right direction. Tampa's housing authority wants up to $25-million in federal funds, which it would leverage 3-to-1 with other public and private money, to build hundreds of new apartments. The money also would go to repair sidewalks and roads, move tenants into traditional neighborhoods and help some obtain job training or a high school degree. "Hope VI is important," said Jerome Ryans, Tampa's housing director, using the program's catchy name, "because it changes the dynamics of public housing. You're not just rehabbing buildings, but the lives of the people who live there."

Ryans has worked ably to correct the mess he inherited from Tampa's longtime housing chief, Audley Evans, who recently was charged by federal prosecutors with bribery, fraud, conspiracy and money-laundering. Part of Riverview Terrace's notoriety, Ryans says, is that "for the past 10 or 15 years, money wasn't spent there, and I don't know why." Some needy residents won't move there out of fear. The city has done little to improve the situation, the stigma of crime remains and the neighborhood is pinched between I-275 and the river. There is little to work with even if Tampa secures Hope VI, which is no sure bet.

The challenge is not rebuilding Riverview Terrace so much as changing the attitude that public housing is a write-off. Though the city's only role is to appoint the housing authority board, the two agencies will need the other's cooperation and money to redevelop the area, relocate residents, put able-bodied people to work and avoid the aesthetic and planning mistakes that make the projects an awful sight. With or without Hope VI, Tampa should raze Riverview Terrace, or else red-lining will continue in Sulphur Springs and growth will suffocate in Seminole Heights. Decency aside, simple economics requires the city's greatest accomplishment north of Sligh Avenue be more than a zoo.

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