Business as usual: Turmoil at the housing authority
Nevada lawmakers have spent much time and treasure in recent months discussing the issue of “affordable housing.” But rather than impose more government interventions on the market, perhaps they should pay closer attention to the bumbling bureaucracy they created almost a decade ago to oversee public housing programs in Clark County.
To put it indelicately, the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority is a raging dumpster fire.
The dysfunction runs deep:
On Tuesday, the authority board came one vote shy of firing executive director Chad Williams in the wake of an investigation into charges he sexually harassed his secretary. The board instead formed a committee to further review an outside investigator’s report and to
recommend action next month.
Two of the board’s nine commissioners — Misha Hooks and Olivia Diaz — didn’t even bother to show up at Tuesday’s meeting, even though the future of the executive director was on the line. This is nothing new for the panel. The Review-journal reported in 2017 that absenteeism was commonplace among certain commissioners.
An internal investigation concluded in May that Commissioner Theresa Davis had understated income and exaggerated family size in order to maximize her housing subsidies. Authority officials are currently in the process of revoking her taxpayer assistance, but Mr. Williams suspects that workers in the agency knew of the deception for years.
Mr. Williams this week made numerous other allegations involving housing commissioners and improper behavior. They included more charges of manipulating financial information for personal gain, conflicts of interest involving rental properties and pressure to perform favors under the guise of housing authority business.
The agency’s mission statement vows to “conduct business fairly and in transparency.” But despite using taxpayer money to hire an attorney and human resources firm to look into the sexual harassment complaint against Mr. Williams, the authority refuses to release information on the expenditures or the findings of the probe.
The taxpayers deserve better — much, much better. Where is the supervision from Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas, which are charged by statute with appointing authority board members? Where are state lawmakers, who created the regional authority in 2010 yet seem silent as scandal and impropriety seemingly run rampant?
The authority has a budget of more than $150 million, owns 23 local public housing projects and funnels millions of federal dollars to low-income recipients of housing vouchers. At the very least, Nevada legislators should move to beef up oversight of this agency before it slips even further into a cesspool of corruption and patronage.