Daily Business Review, December 01, 2009
By: Paola Iuspa-Abbott

The Hialeah Housing Authority is headed for some drastic changes following the suspension of its executive director and an overhaul of the agency’s board.

The five-member board wants to streamline the application process for people applying for Section 8 vouchers, a federal program that subsidizes rent payments for the needy.

In the last two weeks, the board discovered that the agency has 982 vouchers available for residents at a time when thousands of them, mostly elderly and disabled, are on a waiting list, said Julio Ponce, chairman of the board.

“We have families who have been on the waiting list for years and years and yet we have the ability to underutilize almost 1,000 vouchers,” said Ponce, a critic of executive director Alex Morales.

Ponce is the only one of five commissioners who remained on the board after Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina replaced the others on Nov. 10.

Ponce said that Morales was the only agency official empowered to approve Section 8 applications. Morales did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

“Usually, you lose 20 to 25 voucher participants a month,” Ponce said. “We are filling in 17 to 18 per month so you are always falling behind. We need to expedite the approval process to try to have 100 people ready at all times so when the vouchers become available we fill them immediately.”

Ponce also recently learned that the agency has 52 affordable housing units that are vacant, despite a waiting list.

Another priority of the commission will be to revamp the appeals process for applicants who have had their applications rejected.

Currently, authority employees conduct internal reviews of rejected applications. Critics say this is a conflict of interest.

MORALES ON LEAVE

The new commission put Morales on indefinite administrative leave on Nov. 13 in the wake of a contract dispute. The commissioners are evaluating his job performance to decide whether to terminate his contract, which has more than two years remaining.

Jose Martinez was named interim executive director. Martinez, who has been with the housing agency for about seven years, was director of administration.

The new commission suspended Morales after he successfully lobbied the previous commissioners to approve a new contract that included a three-year severance package in the event his job was terminated with or without cause.

The lump sum payment would be more than $400,000, Ponce said.

Without any notice, Morales presented his proposal to the board on Oct. 27 and won its approval.

Board attorney Charles Citrin unsuccessfully urged delaying the vote until he could review the document. Ponce was the commissioner who voted against the contract.

Ponce supported Morales’ original contract that called for a six-month severance with cause and a year without cause, he said.

On Nov. 10, Robaina replaced the four commissioners who voted for the agreement.

“What threw me off is that neither in the private sector nor the public sector — especially in these hard economic times — do we see guaranteed contracts with a clause that says with or without cause,” Robaina said.

The new board reversed the Oct. 27 vote on Nov. 13.

The removal of Morales, who led the agency for nearly a decade, is a positive sign to some residents who say they have unsuccessfully sought rental subsidies for years.

“God is good,” said Aida Flores, when she heard the news. After she waited four years for her application to be processed, her application was denied last year. The agency claimed she failed to provide enough information from her landlord. Flores said she presented four letters from the landlord, but was told it wasn’t enough.

Flores and Georgina de Leon, Manuel Lopez and Aida Villarta sued the housing agency in July, claiming it violated the federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disability Act, and violated its own administrative rules.

Legal Services of Greater Miami and the Florida Justice Institute are representing the plaintiffs, who are all indigent, disabled and elderly, according to the complaint.

The 86-year-old Flores is having trouble paying her rent of $665 a month. She says she earns a monthly income of about $650.

She often gets help from her children or cleans houses with a friend to make ends meet, she said. The rental subsidy would pay a large portion — at least 60 percent — of her rent, Flores said.

“I can hardly pay my rent and that man wanted a three-year salary deal?” Flores said in Spanish. “Some people are so greedy.”

Flores hopes the new administration will review her case and agree to settle the lawsuit by granting her assistance.

Jeffrey Hearne, a senior housing attorney with Legal Services, also hopes the new leadership will be more inclined to resolve disputes.

“We are hopeful that the new executive director will be responsive to the needs of the residents of the Hialeah Housing Authority’s programs,” he said. “All we want is that they follow the law, and if the new director is responsive, that will happen.”

Hearne’s office also represents clients of the Miami-Dade Public Housing Agency, one of the largest of its kind in the nation. He said Legal Services receives more complaints about the Hialeah Housing Authority — which is allocated nearly 3,500 vouchers — than over the Miami-Dade agency, which has a program of nearly 15,000 vouchers.

“In proportion, we saw a larger number of complaints from Hialeah than we should have,” he said.

Many of the complaints came from applicants who were denied Section 8 vouchers for failing to provide documents “that were not necessary to determine their eligibility for housing,” Hearne said.

ON APPEAL

Many of the agency’s complaints were rooted in the appeals process Morales had implemented, according to Ponce and Robaina.

Ponce said he plans to push for a new appeals procedure. He favors an independent board or other entity to review the agency’s application denials. He would like to have members of the Miami-Dade Pulbic Housing Agency and the Hialeah authority swap their appeals for review.

“That way, an independent entity will have no fear that if they overturn [a case] the executive director will be able to fire, or another department [within the housing agency], will be able to fire them because they are overturning files,” he said.

Kenneth Goodman, co-director of the University of Miami’s ethics programs, said credibility requires an independent process.

“You want any sort of appeal entity to be independent and not accountable to the people who made the decision in the first place,” said Goodman, who is not involved with the housing agency.

Setting up a review board costs money, and some government agencies may not be able to afford that expense, Goodman said.

The Hialeah Housing Authority uses taxpayer dollars to defend itself against federal lawsuits that might have been prevented had a different appeals process been in place.

“We are penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Goodman said. ”We’ll spend a dollar and a half to save a dollar as long as we don’t have to pay the dollar in taxes.”

Paola Iuspa-Abbott can be reached at (305) 347-6657.