MILLENNIA
and a combat deployment in Afghanistan behind him. True to his Massachusetts roots, he had a Bill Belichick quote in his email signature for much of 2018 (“Do your job”) and pronounced “apartments” without the “r.” He worked out of HUD’s Southwest region, in the same HUD division that oversaw Sandpiper Cove down in Texas. He attended meetings with the city and Frank and kept in touch with Emalea. Most of his frustrations for the next two years would play out over email.
Emalea reported to Ed that the city had gone back out in late September 2018 for a re-inspection and found several violations. He shot back a two-word response: “Classic Millennia!”
When Ed visited Englewood in late February 2019, he expected to see more.
“I am less than pleased when we visited on Friday,” he wrote to Emalea. “The first building is nowhere near complete. Frank assured me work would begin in Feb regardless of tax credit closing. Indeed on 1 Feb when we went out to see they had started gutting but then apparently stopped claiming no permit. I think he blew smoke and had no intention of starting early.” He sent an email saying as much to Millennia.
On May 9, 2019 — three months after the planned start date — he wrote another email to Emalea, detailing a meeting with a new Millennia VP.
“It is apparent to me Frank Sinito deceived us during our 3 December 2018 call in which he promised to start rehab work in February,” he wrote. “As with previous meetings with senior Millennia leadership she seemed indifferent to our concerns.”
Ed learned that a roof had collapsed at Englewood the same week he spoke to the new Millennia executive. (Back in 2018, he’d observed that building as being particularly uninhabitable.) He was not happy with what he found at his next inspection on May 16. Frank replied with an apology and an assurance: “This development is our first priority.”
When Ed forwarded the email to Kansas City officials, he added his own opinion: “Not very strong and I am concerned rehab is nearly 100 days behind schedule.”
Three months later, on Aug. 30, Ed visited again. He found the conditions “exactly the same,” he wrote in an email to Frank. The project, he wrote, was over six months behind schedule. He had seen two occupied units without power and raw sewage pooling on the floor and piling up in a kitchen sink. HUD reached out to the Missouri agency administering the federal housing tax credits Millennia had won and asked for a meeting. “They appear to be reusing old and damaged material and we noted moisture and mold on the sheet rock,” Ed wrote in a September email to the Missouri housing agency.
By then, Ed had had enough. On Sept. 4, he wrote a letter to Millennia, demanding that they hire a different management company rather than doing it themselves.
“You have allowed unsatisfactory physical conditions to exist at the property for the past three years without any meaningful abatement of the deficiencies,” he wrote.
The company appealed. A higher-up in HUD’s Southwest region, the region overseeing Sandpiper Cove, shot it down. Dan was thrilled.
The change never happened. Dan gives some credit now that Englewood is improving. But he wonders how HUD let it fall so far. Even through allegations of mismanagement by an ex-employee, continuing complaints at another Millenniaowned Kansas City property and a full HUD investigation into Englewood, Millennia remained.
Dan was furious. There seemed to be no way to get Millennia to do better and no way to get it out.
But in September 2019, a former Millennia employee at Englewood went to the local Fox affiliate. She had the rent rolls. There was a problem.
“It seems they have problems there, too.”