Housing board set to fill nonprofit seats
New names to be appointed; chairman seeks end to membership overlap
The reconstituted board of the Little Rock housing authority will make new appointments to the board of an affiliated nonprofit in the near future after voting to oust the nonprofit’s leaders on Oct. 25.
Known as the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation, the nonprofit was formed by the housing authority for development purposes in 2006, but its management has been scrutinized amid a recent effort to stabilize the housing authority.
The housing authority’s board had been expected to take up a resolution to open up applications for the board of the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation during a meeting on Tuesday, according to Tom Carpenter, the Little Rock city attorney, and Kerry Wright, the housing authority’s board chair.
However, with just Wright and Vice Chair Karen Buchanan present, the meeting was called off because the board did not have a quorum of three members.
Commissioner Bruce James was unable to attend because of a family emergency, Wright told attendees. He said the meeting would be rescheduled for next Tuesday.
In September, the Little Rock Board of Directors expelled then-Chair H. Lee Lindsey and then-Vice Chair Leta Anthony from the housing authority’s board after a host of issues were identified by federal regulators. They included the housing authority’s failure to submit audited financial information for 2019 and subsequent years.
The following month, the reconstituted housing authority board voted to remove the nonprofit’s five board members, including Anthony, who served as president.
At the time, Wright cited the problems that led to a “troubled” designation for the housing authority as well as an unfavorable report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s
Quality Assurance Division. HUD had problems getting information from the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation, he said.
Two weeks later, the housing authority’s board voted to demand that all personnel previously involved with the nonprofit turn over banking information, passwords for accounting software and more no later than Nov. 13. A resolution authorized the city attorney’s office “to take all appropriate legal action necessary to accomplish this purpose.”
The two boards previously shared some of the same members, but that will no longer be the case going forward, according to Wright.
At the time of their removal, in addition to Anthony and Lindsey, the nonprofit’s board included two other former housing authority commissioners, Branndii Peterson and Kenyon Lowe Sr., according to the housing authority’s resolution.
On Tuesday, Wright indicated that the housing authority’s board would not appoint members of the housing authority’s board to the board of the nonprofit. “We don’t want to emulate what we just came out of,” Wright told reporters.
Carpenter told reporters that from talking with “various creditors,” officials learned the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation had given authorization to do things like take out loans without going through the housing authority because of their overlapping board members.
Officials still have not been able to track down all of the financial accounts tied to the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation, Carpenter said.
Different explanations for the absence of records have been given in court and at a city board hearing, Carpenter noted, adding that “we just know we don’t have everything.”
Asked if that meant the Central Arkansas Housing Corporation had not complied with the deadline set by the housing authority’s board to turn over financial information and other items, Carpenter said, “I don’t think they did, I’ll answer it that way.”
Additionally, efforts are underway to waive a requirement set out in federal law that one of the members of the housing authority’s board be a resident of public housing.
The issue has come up in a lawsuit filed by Lindsey and Anthony in which they are seeking to be reinstated to the housing authority’s board.
The term of the last resident commissioner, Louis Jackson, expired on Sept. 30.
City board members confirmed Buchanan and James — both non-residents of public housing — to the seats held by Jackson and Peterson; because of a judge’s order in the litigation, at the moment the city is temporarily barred from replacing Lindsey and Anthony on the panel.
Records show that the housing authority’s Executive Director Ericka Benedicto requested the temporary waiver in a letter dated Monday to Anthony S. Landecker, the director of public housing for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Little Rock field office.
“As you are aware, our [public housing agency] has had a lot of disruptions to day-to-day operations that persist,” Benedicto wrote. She pledged to “make every effort to seat a resident commissioner in the future as applicable.”
In a letter dated the same day and delivered Tuesday, Landecker notified another HUD official of the waiver request, which he said should be granted under an exception for small public housing agencies.
Wright told reporters on Tuesday that he hoped the waiver would get final federal approval within a week or two.