The Bridgeport Housing Authority will have four executive directors in about four years with the announced departure of George Byers following a dispute with Mayor Joe Ganim who appoints the commissioners. The authority that recast itself Park City Communities has a $51 million budget serving the housing needs of 12,000 residents.
Ganim staffer Ed Adams, a retired FBI agent, has recently served as the mayor’s point person reviewing department operations and guidelines set by the federal Housing and Urban Development that regulates the authority. The mayor has no day-to-day supervision but has juice in appointing commissioners who ultimately select the executive director.
One of the authority’s ambitious projects is housing replacement for the troubled Marina Village apartments in the South End. Ganim and Byers knocked heads over security and other issues. Byers is gone with a buyout into next January and Ganim is not weeping over it.
CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart has more:
In an interview last week Byers cited friction with the mayor–specifically a behind-the-scenes fight over reimbursing the city for the security initiative–as one reason for his returning to Indiana.
“It did cause great tension,” Byers said, adding he felt the mayor, elected last November, did not want the board to extend Byers’ tenure.
Ganim confirmed the dispute.
“Not only did we get a lack of cooperation, we got a lack of truthfulness (and) forthrightness in trying to at least put together an agenda that would make things better,” Ganim said.
Ganim said Byers “left on his own accord.”
“I’m not necessarily sad he left,” the mayor added.
Full story here.
The BHA has been a failure for too many years to remember, not only the directors but also the BHA board.
Two other reasons were,
1) To reconnect with Jennifer Buchanan and
2) Because Mike Pence will not be REELECTED governor.
Made me laugh out loud.
Actually, Trump’s choice of Pence was a masterstroke! Perhaps you’ll remember the speculation eight years ago that if Obama were to be elected, no problem, someone would surely take him out? Look at what Trump has done! If Trump were to win, knowing Pence would replace him if Trump were to be incapacitated is sure to make any would-be gunman to think, not twice, but many many times!
Point to you. This country. Watching this presidential race, I feel I am reliving the last Bridgeport Mayoral election.
I can only imagine how these negotiations went.
Ganim: I need a million dollars for police coverage.
Byers: You’re crazy. We never agreed to this.
Ganim: I need a million dollars for police coverage.
This is a classic case of a failed Housing Authority. HUD needs to step in and assume control.
Ditto!
The current BHA commissioners are also a part of the problem.
Richard DeJesus (D)
Bridgeport, CT 06610
Term Expires: 12/31/2017
Dulce Nieves (D)
Bridgeport, CT 06604
Term Expires: 12/31/2019
Janet Ortiz (D)
Bridgeport, CT 06606
Term Expires: 12/31/2018
Rev. Sulton Stack (D)
Bridgeport, CT 06606
Term Expires: 12/31/2015
Hadassah Nightingale (Resident representative)
Bridgeport, CT 06608
Term Expires: 12/31/2016
It is easy to say there are failures, waste of resources, etc. when priorities are not set out ahead of time with dates set out, also ahead for evaluating results. Yes, public housing does seem to be in continuing turmoil but the reasons are generally not specific. Is public safety the real issue? With $100 million or more in the Police budget, why was the Mayor looking for money elsewhere? When Mayor Finch or Mayor Ganim appoints a City representative to the Park City Communities Board, what is their education or training, when is their City evaluation, what are City priorities to be observed? There are about 2600 units in the PCP portfolio I have been told, and another 2600 vouchers that can be used in the community. I understand waiting lists are long, but also there are empty units. Where is there an explanation of a fuller story?
When Mr. Byers came to town, there was a financial mess reported with use of funds inappropriately suggested. If $10-15 Million of irregularities have been resolved in the past two years that would seem a good thing, kind of cleaning the decks and prepared for the serious business of providing clean, safe living conditions that has or hasn’t been happening. But where are the metrics? And where was this a Mayoral priority during the campaign or when he set out his budget this past spring? And where is OPEN, ACCOUNTABLE, TRANSPARENT and HONEST reporting inasmuch as this matter has been in the hands of Ed Adams recently? Perhaps we need more info about the “juice?” Time will tell.
Policing and security of public housing has been a problem going back into the 1970s. Superintendent of police Joe Walsh ran the police department. Public housing had its own police force and Walsh didn’t want Bridgeport police officers responding to calls there because the housing police were being funded by federal money from HUD. There has always been a fight for HUD funding police and who was to perform those duties.
Thanks for providing a history of public safety and the ways it has been provided and at whose cost through the years. Park City Communities, formerly BHA, has about 2600 units and 2600 vouchers as part of its Bridgeport service. Still there are waiting lists and vacant units, etc. for multiple reasons. The actual housing units pay no taxes, thought residents attend schools, rely on police and fire protection as well as other community services and perhaps it is reasonable to ask what HUD regulations allow regarding safety issues. Anybody? Has the Council asked for and perhaps received a “do-over” of the poorly prepared and confusing Police Department budget request for this year? We should pursue that. Until you can see the full range of positions contemplated, and if filled with available and trained officers, the assignments they will be placed in, how do we make some of these decisions? Yet the public is being asked to pay beyond where it hurts. That is purposeful unfortunately and will gain a response that may not be enjoyed. Time will tell.
Buh-Bye!
Cecil Young, among other community activists, has been citing specific, serious, safety, quality of life, and social isolation issues affecting Bridgeport BHA-administered housing residents for decades. (While some might question the value of Cecil’s concerns/reporting, most of the issues he has raised have been validated by the media and echoed by others, after the fact.)
All our state and federal elected officials have been continually apprised of our BHA problems during the course of these decades. These officials have largely given only lip-service to these problems, or have played into the city politics of these issues, exacerbating problems while impeding possible solutions.
The implications of the decades-long, disastrous condition of Bridgeport public housing is, by and large, city, state, and federal officials are happy to use the problems and solution proposals as photo-ops, but always manage to disappear when the time comes to account for the accomplishment of solutions with federal monies issued for such solutions (such monies often disappearing during the course of federal-state-city money shell games).
The bottom line is the federal government, along with the state, are happy to use BHA housing and its occupants as political commodities that can be bought with unsecured federal “promissory notes,” for indicated services and physical improvements, the latter of which are too often undelivered or incomplete/shoddy.
In the present case, the BHA should absolutely be accommodating city efforts to secure the safety of BHA occupants. If it takes $1,000,000 of BHA money to accomplish an effective partnership with the city, they’re getting off cheap. We’re talking about the safety of American citizens housed under the auspices of the federal government. The US spends millions every time we decide to exacerbate the world’s problems by blowing up whoever happens to be occupying territory in some part of the world that we feel we should be controlling on behalf of multi-national corporate interests. But when it comes time to take care of our own people, staged, political drama in terms of a pretended attempt at mission accomplishment is all our federal officials can deliver.
And what did Blumenthal, Himes, Murphy, and Malloy promise during the latest series of meetings concerning deadly conditions in BHA housing?
Mayor Ganim is on target here. He’s right to call out the BHA for incompetence and shirking their statutory obligations (where IS the $?!). Now he needs to call out the Goldman-Sachs-Centerfold-Girl Asskisser Crew, Blumenthal, Himes, Murphy, and Malloy, for not following through on their many years of promises. Maybe when Hillary becomes president she’ll help Bridgeport. (Not!!! She’ll throw us a booby-prize bone in a fraudulent, rigged, inter-city “contest,” just like Bill did. Recall the “Community Collaborative for Bridgeport?”)
Good riddance, Mr. Byers. You couldn’t even find a way to paint and staff a small community center in the BHA’s largest housing project.
What do all the state and federal candidates pandering for Bridgeport votes in this election cycle have to say about all this? And how about the Post Editorial Board perception of all this?
(Not to range and ramble excessively, but it can’t help but be noticed a lack of leadership and failure to honor statutory responsibilities is prevalent throughout all levels of US government at this time in our history. Bridgeport, Detroit et al. are just symptoms of this. It is right for our mayor, whatever criticisms of his administration might be leveled, to call out the state and federal government for their failure to meet obligations to Bridgeport. This BHA situation isn’t even the tip of that iceberg.)
WE need a McLevy Moment. Just throw out all the Bridgeport power brokers. Throw out the Pizzamaker. Throw out McCarthy, Stallworth and Bradley at the primaries in August 2016. Throw out the puppets on the City Council in 2017 and castrate Ganim. WE have to wait until 2018 to turn Bridgeport around.
The problems of the BHA seem to be the same problems of 25 years ago, bumbling bureaucracy, inept board of directors and a system that perpetuates social ills.
HUD appoints the executive director and the Bridgeport mayor appoints the board. HUD will appoint another HUD bureaucrat as exec director. Will Ganim overhaul the board? Can he?
I concluded long ago that HUD oversees a housing system that became the housing component of a failed social welfare system. The Section 8 housing program (which HUD/BHA manages) was supposed to address some of the negative components of public housing projects, but that has become nothing more than contracted public housing.
Hopefully, the Ganim administration will influence the selection of a new executive director and appoint new board members that will support the changes that are needed.
And what will our congressional delegation be expected to do? Just continue to show up at ribbon cuttings for taxpayer-funded housing and gatherings to bemoan violence? They need to be part of this effort in change management that Ganim must drive.
Tom, I agree.
But didn’t they change their name to Park City Communities? Wasn’t that supposed to fix all their ills?
Bob,
When PCP replaces a regimen of BHA, you might have expected the ills to be fixed, no? Time will tell.
I think you all missed the real problem. A problem that plagues BPT at all levels. $51 million to serve 12,000 people. 12,000 people. That is one in 10 of BPT’s population. That is an unsustainable ratio. $51 million for 12K people is $354.16 a month. That means nine BPT residents pay $354.16 for the one resident. Or each resident pays $39.35 a month to support this.