Dean, Silent in Probe, Discusses HUD With Protesters

WASHINGTON — Deborah Gore Dean heard the angry chants float up from the sidewalk in front of her Georgetown home Friday morning.

“What is this in regard to?” she called down to the crowd of about 20 protesters.

“We want to talk to you about HUD,” someone yelled back.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” said Dean, the former high official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development who is now one of the focal characters in an investigation of alleged influence-peddling. “I’ve had enough.”

“So have we,” the crowd replied.

“Unbelievable,” Dean said as she walked down a flight of stairs with her dog, Buddy, to find her front door open and the protesters on her doorstep.

Talks About Scandal

Within minutes, Dean began doing what Congress has wanted for months. She talked about the HUD scandals.

“If I’ve done something wrong, I’m completely willing to try to make it right. . . . I don’t have a single personal friend who ever got something from HUD,” said Dean, the former executive assistant to Samuel R. Pierce Jr., HUD secretary during the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Dean, Pierce and other housing officials have been questioned by Congress on suspicion of steering millions of dollars’ worth of federal housing contracts to developers and consultants who had strong Republican connections. So far, Dean has refused to testify.

But, on Friday, Dean, barefoot and obviously hurriedly dressed in jeans and a blouse that was turned inside out, tried to politely answer questions shouted up to her from the crowd.

The protest was organized by the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a housing advocacy group that alerted the Post to its demonstration.

But as rain fell, Dean tried to appease.

“There are some good people at HUD,” she said. “I liked Sam Pierce. He was a good person . . . but I think there might have been people there who have done things they are trying to hide.”

At one point, Dean opened her home to the group but refused to invite in the reporter who was there. The crowd would not settle for that. Instead, they pulled up umbrellas and kept questioning: “Are you hiding something?” “Are you a God-fearing person?”

“I’m a very, very God-fearing person,” Dean said. “I know you want to make a point, and I don’t want to take that away from you, but if you want to keep shouting back and forth . . . .

“I tried to help out at HUD. I worked there six years, very long hours, trying to help . . . .”

Morning strollers gawked at the scene. Some neighbors peered out from behind curtains. One person hoisted a video camera and began recording the parade of people and placards that, in one instance, admonished: “Debbie Dean, Come Clean.”

Dean repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Someone wanted to know what happened to money that should have been used to improve low-income housing. That money, known as moderate rehabilitation funds, came under scrutiny by the HUD inspector general, who pointed out in April that something had gone wrong.

What did Dean know about where that money went? It “all went to low and moderate housing except for a couple cases,” she said.

One preacher in the crowd, Elder Willie Jackson, took Dean to task for her ways. “If you’re a God-fearing person, all you have to do is get down on your knees and He’ll show you what to do,” Jackson said.

“I know. I’ve been doing that,” Dean said.

Protesters’ Letter

Alberta Shields, who lives in federal subsidized housing in southeast Washington, led the group and said she came to get answers from the 34-year-old consultant. She read a letter that began much like notes from appreciative developers who once wrote to Dean during her years at HUD: “Dear Debbie.”

“We are the people who live in the low-income neighborhoods that suffered as you gave precious HUD resources away to your friends,” Shields read.

“Can you lend us some money? We need to fix up those abandoned HUD houses in our neighborhoods, so we can get rid of the crack dealers you have allowed to move in.”

Dean, running her hands through disheveled hair, nodded. “OK, OK, I don’t blame you.”

Later, Dean again tried to plead her case. “I really loved my years at HUD. I spent all my time on fair housing. But you wouldn’t know that from the press . . . .

“I’m really, really, really sorry. I wish you knew me and what I tried to do at HUD. . . . I’ve been made such a scapegoat. This is what I wanted to do the rest of my life.

“And, when I walk into HUD now, people turn the other way.”