Roadmap to recovery

Hoboken’s low-income housing projects hope to rise above ‘troubled’ status

The ceiling of the Adams Gardens Community Room began to leak as if on cue during the Hoboken Housing Authority’s (HHA) monthly meeting on June 9, as the board – which oversees Hoboken’s 1,300 units of subsidized low-income housing – discussed their proposed “recovery agreement” with the federal government. Their agreement with the department of Housing and Urban Development is meant to help them fix the numerous problems, physical and otherwise, that led to the authority’s designation last year as a “low performing” troubled agency.
The Housing Authority was designated troubled on June 1, 2015 when it failed HUD’s Public Housing Assessment System with a score of 54 percent. It had been designated sub-standard under HUD’s Physical Assessment Subsystem since December 2010.
The HHA Board of Commissioners voted unanimously at the meeting to confirm the new “recovery agreement” agreement with HUD. This should help the HHA move out of their troubled status within the next few years.
Hoboken’s low-income housing is run by a day-to-day paid executive director and staff, but they are overseen by the all-volunteer Board of Commissioners and by HUD. Currently, the board majority is allied with Mayor Dawn Zimmer.

What’s to be done

New Executive Director Marc Recko explained that the recovery agreement is the first step of many in improving conditions.

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If the HHA does not show improvement, HUD would have the power to take over.
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“Part of the requirement [HUD] has of us, [since] we are a low-performing troubled housing authority, is to do a two-year workout plan to get out of troubled status. The first step in entering that workout plan with them is this agreement,” he said. “It’s an agreement between HUD, Hoboken Housing Authority, and the city would also be a co-signature on this agreement.”
During the meeting he said that he Hoboken city administration does not have a problem co-signing the agreement and that Mayor Dawn Zimmer was waiting to hear the outcome of the board’s vote.
Recko said he “talked to the mayor on the city’s signature… and she is waiting for this board now to go ahead and say yes. She’s looking forward to it.”
HUD stated in its Public Housing Authority Recovery and Sustainability (PHARS) assessment that there were several causes for the HHA’s failure in 2015, one of which was a void of leadership, “The authority’s poor performance,” the report stated, “can be attributed in part to the fact that there have been three Interim Executive Directors in a short period of time.”
The HHA had terminated its director, Carmelo Garcia, the year before, then had directors in the interim. Garcia has filed a lawsuit against the agency, and they have filed one against him as well.
Recko took over as executive director in September of 2015.

‘A comprehensive plan’

Since Recko has taken the position, he has worked in conjunction with the HHA, HUD, and the housing staff to create a detailed spreadsheet of actionable items to correct the HHA’s failures.
“[We have] put together an extremely comprehensive plan that we have here tonight that …[will] get us out of this status, to be able to address [these physical] problems like the one we are having right now,” said HHA Board Chairperson Dana Wefer, speaking not far from the leak in the ceiling of the community room at Adams Gardens.
Recko said he has not seen a strategic plan like this in any of his files and that there is no record of such an agreement by previous executive directors.
“I’ve only been here a couple of months but I haven’t seen this type of a plan in my files,” said Recko, “and I am a firm believer in planning and holding people accountable and getting it down on paper. I think this gives us a roadmap.”
Members of the board voiced their support and the importance of recovery.
“We have been a troubled housing authority for many years,” Commissioner LaTrenda Ross said, “and I’m quite sure the residents, including myself, and the board think it’s time that we need to get out of this rut we are in.”
Newly-sworn in Commissioner Hovie Forman stressed the importance of tackling the physical needs of the building interiors.
“I just want to make sure that whatever comes our way we are going to start taking care of the infrastructure, the inside of the buildings,” said Forman. “I don’t know how old the pipes are [or] if they are the same ones from when my mother and father lived down here in the fifties [but] that’s where a lot of tenants have problems… the interior of the buildings need a lot of help.”

Physical repairs are already underway

In his report to the commissioners, Recko said that elevator repairs in Fox Hill Gardens were underway, and that the roofs of several units in Harrison Gardens were under construction after they suffered severe water damage.
He also said that there were new doors for the elderly and disabled sites under construction and that two out of four of the HHA’s new generators were already installed.
The HHA has also begun to address problems with accountability and the organization’s structure.
“The organizational structure lends itself to poor accountability,” stated the PHARS report. “Further, it was unclear because of the poor organizational structure who was accountable to who, especially in leading the HHA’s maintenance department.”
“We’re about to take a major step forward with the hiring of a maintenance director in the next few weeks,” said Wefer in a followup email to the newspaper. “To my knowledge, this will be the first time that the position will be held by a person whose dedicated career is actually property maintenance and who is being hired based on an actual advertising of a position, real interviews, and true vetting process. Once that piece of the puzzle is in place, moving forward on the physical initiatives will continue at a much quicker pace.”
If the HHA does not show improvement, HUD would have the power to take over the HHA, according to the Annual Contributions Contract and the recovery agreement.
“They [HUD] would have the power to force the Housing Authority to merge with another organization or go into receivership. There are ramifications,” said Recko. “This is serious business.”

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