A soon-to-be-released management review of the Chicago Housing Authority, said to be highly critical of former executive Director Zirl Smith, was co-ordinated by a federal official who ex-colleagues say maintained a close working relationship with former CHA Chairman Renault Robinson over the last five years.
The review, conducted by experts from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and coordinated by Phyllis Griffith, was requested from HUD last year by Robinson, who had fought with Smith for nearly three years over day-to-day control of operations at the financially troubled housing authority.
Meanwhile, on Friday the public-interest lawyer chiefly responsible for creation of the Chicago Housing Authority`s currently bankrupt scattered-site public housing program filed a motion in U.S. District Court calling for the program to be placed into receivership.
The results of the management inquiry, begun in November, have not been made public, but for several months sources have leaked reports that the review found that Smith made questionable management and spending decisions. Nothing critical of Robinson has been leaked.
Griffith`s professional relationships with Robinson and CHA board member Leon Finney Jr., a Robinson ally, have raised questions among several present and former CHA officials over her ability to be objective about who is responsible for the housing authority`s troubled operations.
Former colleagues said Thursday that Griffith has often ”communicated extensively” and worked closely with Robinson and Finney since 1982. They said that during CHA board discussions Robinson frequently referred to conversations he had held with Griffith.
”I would take her report with a huge grain of salt,” said Andrew Mooney, a former CHA chairman and executive director.
Griffith, a specialist in troubled housing authorities, said Thursday that she was assigned by HUD to work directly with the CHA for several months in 1982 and was on loan to the housing authority at Robinson`s request for six months in 1983 and 1984. She said she also sat in on a series of meetings last year between HUD and the CHA over funding for elevator improvements.
Despite those assignments, she said she never had much contact with Robinson or Finney.
She defended her objectivity as team leader of the management review. ”I coordinated it,” she said. ”I didn`t take anything out of the findings. Nor did I add anything. I did not influence anybody.”
Attempts Thursday to reach Robinson for comment were unsuccessful.
Adolph Slaughter, a spokesman for HUD regional Administrator Gertrude Jordan, defended the validity of the management review and indicated that questions about Griffith`s objectivity ”may be an attempt to discredit the review before it`s issued.”
The federal court request calling for the scattered-site program to be placed into receivership was filed with U.S. District Court Judge Marvin E. Aspen and follows another federal judge`s decision Tuesday to permit the CHA to suspend temporarily the controversial court-ordered program.
The financially strapped CHA asked that the scattered-site program be suspended because it has run out of money. On Friday the CHA said it would begin boarding up more than 100 scattered-site housing units in 21 buildings now under rehabilitation across the city and start temporarily laying off 237 crafts workers assigned to the program.
”In light of the CHA`s financial difficulties and its long history of mismanaging the program, I`m asking the court to appoint an official, at least temporarily, to take over managerial decisions for the scattered-site program,” said Alexander Polikoff, the lawyer whose lawsuits against the CHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1966 resulted in a court order establishing the scattered-site housing program.
Placing the scattered-site program into receivership ”I believe would be salutary, air-cleaning and therapeutic,” Polikoff said. ”It just has to be done.”
Polikoff says he plans to argue in support of his motion before Judge Aspen on Thursday, when Aspen is due back from vacation.
Polikoff sued the CHA and HUD in 1966 on behalf of seven CHA residents who charged that both agencies had unlawfully discriminated against Chicago`s black public-housing residents by concentrating virtually all the city`s public-housing units in predominantly poor black neighborhoods.
The suit resulted in a landmark court order in 1969 directing the CHA and HUD to construct or rehabilitate apartments for public housing on scattered sites in predominantly white as well as in black neighborhoods.
Since then, however, implementation of the program has been stalled repeatedly as a result of white neighborhood resistance and foot-dragging by the CHA.
In his motion Friday, Polikoff pointed out that the federal court obliged the CHA eight years ago to provide 800 scattered-site houing units just as
”an interim goal.”
”Yet the CHA has still not provided those 800 units,” he said.
”Moreover, it is now boarding up–rather than completing–some of them on which it had begun work. And it can give no assurances respecting when it will resume its interrupted work, or commence work on those units not yet started.”
Polikoff pointed out that this is the third time he has asked the court to place the long-troubled and currently bankrupt scattered-site program into receivership.
In 1980 Polikoff filed a motion for receivership with former U.S. District Judge John Powers Crowley, who denied the request after city and CHA officials assured him they would aggressively pursue implementation of the scattered-site program.
Polikoff made the request again in 1983 of Judge Aspen after the city and CHA continued to delay acquiring the 800 scattered-site units Crowley ordered in 1979.
Inititally, Aspen ruled in favor of the motion, but when the CHA hurriedly acquired more than 400 scattered-site units, Aspen, in January, 1984, vacated the order.
Now the CHA`s scattered-site program is again in trouble, Polikoff said, the only difference being that this time, instead of dragging its feet, the CHA has run out of money to continue the program and says it won`t resume it until new funds from HUD become available.
”What I propose to tell Judge Aspen is that, as in baseball, the CHA has had its three swings to implement the scattered-site program and three times it has failed,” Polikoff said. ”In baseball, three strikes and the batter is out.”
Polikoff explained that a receiver could work either independently of or in cooperation with the CHA in ensuring implementation of the scattered-site program. In addition, a receiver would more likely obtain HUD`s cooperation in funding the program. The CHA has run out of money for the scattered-site program, partly because HUD has been slow in reimbursing the housing authority for operating funds the agency says it has had to spend over the last 18 months to keep the program going.
