Texas Woman Picked as Director of Troubled City Housing Agency

Leila Gonzalez-Correa, a Texas city official who is considered an expert in the financing of low-income housing, has been named executive director of the Los Angeles City Housing Authority, officials announced Friday.

Gonzalez-Correa, who now is executive director of the Austin Housing Authority, was selected from among 200 applicants after a search for “somebody that understood the financing of housing, so they could assist us in building new housing,” Al Greene, chairman of the city Housing Commission, said at a City Hall news conference. Gonzalez-Correa will assume her post Oct. 20.

The Housing Authority provides shelter for about 81,000 of the city’s low-income residents, managing 8,000 public housing units and handling federal rent subsidies for an additional 19,000 units.

The Housing Authority has been headed by an acting director since the resignation last November of former executive director Homer Smith, who left after a long controversy over his leadership.

Mayor Tom Bradley, in announcing the appointment, called Gonzalez-Correa “one of the most skilled, outstanding and experienced individuals in the field of public housing anywhere in this nation.”

Gonzalez-Correa comes to Los Angeles after four months in Austin, preceded by nine months as executive director of the El Paso Housing Authority. An attorney, she was general counsel for the Dallas Housing Authority from 1982 to 1985. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1952 and earned a law degree from the same university in 1958.

She said she believes that because of her background, she “can be creative where some people wouldn’t know how to be creative, as regards financing, tenant relations (or) running a public housing project.”

The Housing Authority intends to issue bonds to build new low-income housing, she said. It will also use equity in authority-owned projects as collateral to borrow funds for rehabilitation and new construction, she added.

She said she also hopes to put tenants to work doing repairs, gardening and painting in the projects, offering them rent reductions as payment.

Greene said the Housing Commission intends to “figure out ways to make money with the properties we have” as a way to finance improvements.

“What other housing authorities have done is they have taken a valuably positioned piece of land and come up with a way to develop it to provide mixed-use housing and commercial development,” Greene said.

Gonzalez-Correa took over as head of the Austin Housing Authority amid federal criticism of the department. In the four months she was there, she was able to acquire $3 million in federal funds for 100 new housing units for the city and $3.5 million to renovate a troubled housing project.

Focus of Controversy

When she headed the El Paso Housing Authority, Gonzalez-Correa was the focus of intense controversy and anonymous death threats over changes she made in the rent-collection system, aimed at eliminating cash transactions.

Gonzalez-Correa said Friday that she tried to end cash rental payments because seven project managers--who were responsible for setting rents, collecting the payments and depositing the funds--had been stealing money.

“I terminated those people and turned them over to the police,” she said.

There also were charges by some in the Mexican-American community that she could not be objective because of her Puerto Rican background. But when she resigned, she said it was to be closer to her teen-age children living in Dallas, not because of the threats.

Blames ‘Radical Group’

She said that “a very small radical group” of Mexican-Americans, including “one person who really had a personal vendetta against me” had criticized her on the basis of her Puerto Rican background.

“I am Hispanic, that is all that is important,” Gonzalez-Correa said. “I am an expert in housing.”

During the five years before his resignation, ex-director Smith came under repeated fire from his own employees, outside consultants and city officials for bad contracting practices, wasteful spending and dictatorial personnel moves within the agency.

Over Smith’s strenuous objections, the City Council approved a sweeping management overhaul of the Housing Agency in June, 1985, that drastically reduced his power, requiring him to follow strict budgetary practices and preventing him from summarily firing top aides, as he had done in the past.

Terms of Resignation

Smith’s $79,000-a-year contract was to run until January, 1987. Under an agreement reached in return for his resignation, he received $103,805 in salary and a claim for sick leave and vacation time.

Since Smith’s resignation, the Board of Housing Commissioners has assumed a more active role in the authority’s affairs, a role that Greene said Friday will be continued.

Gonzalez-Correa was hired under a three-year contract that will start with an annual salary of $85,000, rising to $95,000 in the second year and $100,000 in the third year.