City asks feds for time to address issues
HUD: Bridgeport’s housing authority is the only such agency in state in a dire condition
BRIDGEPORT — The city’s public housing authority wants extra time to respond to federal requirements after the struggling agency was labeled in default of a plan to improve its management and living conditions for its 9,500 residents.
In four separate letters, Jillian Baldwin, the authority’s executive director
since June 2020, the agency’s mayoral-appointed board, tenant leaders and Bridgeport’s congressional delegation all appealed to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to grant the authority another in a history of extensions.
“While (we have) made phenomenal progress over the past year, a tremendous amount of work remains ahead,” Baldwin wrote. “The deadlines established in the notice of default create a situation wherein the agency will be overly burdened administratively and forced to choose between its continued progress and complying with the short timelines.”
She is seeking to push the deadlines, which range from two to six months, back an additional 60 days.
“We understand and support the need for aggressive oversight of the authority. We have long been dismayed by the lack of progress,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, all Democrats, said in their correspondence to HUD.
However, the three lawmakers stated that the “depressing trajectory changed significantly” when Baldwin took over and she and her staff need “flexibility, time and assistance” to meet the list of default demands.
Rhonda Siciliano, a HUD spokesperson, said Friday the department “is still reviewing the extension request.”
Nearly seven years ago, in December 2014, HUD designated the authority, officially called Park City Communities, as “troubled” due to poor grades of its management, its finances and its aged low-income developments. Park City, technically, then had two years to right the situation or face penalties including takeovers by either the federal government or another Connecticut housing entity.
But instead HUD only last month, on Aug. 19, formally declared that Park City Communities was “in substantial default” for continuing, despite ongoing improvement efforts, to languish in troubled status. According to HUD, Bridgeport’s authority is the only such agency in Connecticut currently in such a dire condition.
Subsequently HUD issued a list of demands for information about how the authority was remedying the situation, each with a deadline of two to six months.
So, for example, within 60 calendar days of the default declaration, the authority was required to hand in several budget documents to the federal government, including “a narrative explanation of projected fiscal year 2022 subsidies, rent income, utility costs, deficits, cost saving measures (and) staffing plans consistent with its repositioning strategy.”
The authority was given 120 days to submit a “draft property management plan” for addressing the “health, safety and livability needs” at its apartment buildings.
And Park City Communities has 180 days to turn over another plan on the future of those structures and what is being done to either sustain them in the longterm or replace them. The authority has over the past several years been slowly transitioning from all-low-income buildings to mixed-income sites, demolishing the old developments and partnering with private firms to construct and manage the new ones. The latest property targeted for such an overhaul is the Charles F. Greene Homes.
Cowlis Andrews is a current member of Park City’s board and that group’s former chairman. On Thursday Andrews said the pleas for the extensions boil down to this already being a busy time of year for “limited staff ” with “limited time.”
“We are working on normal business items, we are cleaning up ... issues and this presents another layer of reporting,” Andrews said. “Sept. 30 is the end of the federal fiscal year and our team starts to prepare for audits and reports to HUD annually. In addition, it is the end of the (fiscal) quarter and that’s an additional set of reports that are due.”
Bridgeport’s public housing has been plagued with problems for the past few decades, from Ganim’s first tenure in office, which ended in 2003, through the administrations of predecessors John Fabrizi and Bill Finch, to when Ganim was reelected in 2015.
Baldwin in an interview earlier this week said that soon after she was hired last year following a national search, HUD warned her that the agency was going to be declared in default. She insisted, though, that despite that label the situation has been greatly improving under her leadership.
“There were 141 recovery action items that had to take place to bring the agency out of troubled status and monitoring from HUD,” Baldwin said. “That was seven years ago. When I came here in 2020 ... 61 (action items) remained open.” She and her staff have reduced that to 26, Baldwin said.
Tenant leaders in their recent letter to HUD expressed support for Baldwin and her team.
“Although it will take some time, progress is being made and we have witnessed many constructive and encouraging changes,” the group wrote.