Housing Commission Focus
The additional scrutiny Mayor Maureen O’Connor and the City Council are giving the San Diego Housing Commission these days is welcome news.
In the last six months, O’Connor and the council have restructured the commission so that five of its seven members are now council members, they have held up pay raises for its top managers and they have criticized the commission for ignoring federal guidelines concerning advertising the availability of a housing rehabilitation program.
The Housing Commission, which has a $42-million annual budget of funds mainly supplied by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was established by the city in 1978. It has helped construct or controls nearly 12,000 housing units.
In its early days, the commission was criticized for moving too slowly in fulfilling its mandate to provide housing for low-income people. More recently it has been controversial for some of its management practices, including Executive Director Ben Montijo’s travel expenses, a $1.5-million loan to a private investor so that he could buy a building in which the commission would then rent space, and the omission in a budget sent to the City Council of a $1- million discretionary fund under Montijo’s control.
Last month it was learned that the Housing Commission failed to advertise the availability of federal funds under a housing rehab program. Instead, the commission went to considerable lengths to help a particular landlord buy a 122-unit apartment complex that then received a large share of the federal subsidy. When HUD learned of the deal from a newspaper reporter, it decided to examine the records. A HUD official says he was told that he could not see the paper work, though the commission says this was just a case of misunderstanding. The commission acknowledged that it didn’t always follow HUD’s advertising guidelines, preferring to spread the word about new programs informally.
In September, then-City Manager Sylvester Murray told the council in a report it requested on the commission: “Most of the current problems of the commission stem from administrative actions of the executive director and the lack of controls and approvals of his actions.”
While it may not be wise for the City Council to, in effect, function as the Housing Commission forever, it is good that the mayor and council members have taken direct responsibility for restoring the agency’s damaged credibility and tightening its management practices.
