Housing Agency Hunting Carefully for New Director : Government: The beleaguered authority does not want a repeat of controversies that accompanied last two executives.

Hoping to avoid past pitfalls that left Los Angeles with two controversial and ineffective Housing Authority chiefs in succession, city officials are conducting an exhaustive nationwide search for a permanent director for the long-troubled agency.

The choice for the $100,000-a-year job is likely to be announced next month, eight months after Executive Director Leila Gonzalez-Correa resigned amid allegations of improper contracting activities, estrangement from tenants and the collapse of her unpopular plan to sell the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts to developers.

“We don’t want any more surprises,” said Housing Authority Commissioner Louis Janicich, chairman of the search team. “We don’t like to read in The Times that Jordan Downs is being sold.”

The candidates’ names have not been released, but two known applicants are Gary Squier, acting director of the Housing Authority, and Earl Phillips, former director of the Houston Housing Authority. Applications also came from Fresno, New Haven, Conn., and other cities, according to housing officials who asked not to be named.

The search team, made up of three housing commissioners, a tenant leader and a city legislative analyst, has traveled to undisclosed cities to observe finalists while they work.

Their efforts contrast sharply with the last search, conducted in 1986 when the housing commission and Mayor Tom Bradley relied heavily upon formal interviews by the city’s Personnel Department to select Gonzalez-Correa.

“You can say what you want in an interview, but we can learn a lot more by actually watching how (a candidate) deals with tenants and others on a day-to-day basis,” said James Krakowski, the legislative analyst on the search team. “We don’t want to see another problem in the director’s position.”

Gonzalez-Correa took over in 1987, 13 months after the resignation of Homer Smith, a friend of Bradley who rose from security guard to eventual head of the Housing Authority. Smith left after being stripped of much of his power by the City Council amid ing allegations of tyrannical management practices and wasteful spending.

Gonzalez-Correa was touted as Smith’s opposite--a professional with ties to Washington who could snare federal money and work closely with tenants to revive the city’s 21 rundown projects.

But she fell into bitter feuds with tenants, who repeatedly demanded that Bradley fire her. She lost $5 million in federal funds that were withdrawn by HUD when she announced her ill-fated idea to sell Jordan Downs. When she resigned last April, she was being investigated by the City Council for awarding contracts to acquaintances and to Bradley’s political supporters without seeking competitive bids.

To many national housing experts, the most remarkable feature of her 30-month tenure was the slow progress in Los Angeles while much of the country’s public housing was swept by tenant-driven reforms. The reforms, involving partnerships in which tenants help make decisions about the apartment complexes where they live, are widely viewed as the key to upgrading the nation’s slum-like public housing.

“I really couldn’t believe how the tenants were cut out of everything in Los Angeles,” said Robert McKay, chairman of the Boston-based Council for Large Public Housing Authorities and an expert on public housing issues. “They simply were not a part of the process like they are at good (housing authorities) today.”

McKay said the choice of a strong-minded, progressive director for the Los Angeles Housing Authority could turn things around and boost the tarnished image of public housing. But he warned that political timidity by the city’s housing commissioners and lack of interest by Bradley could “easily” result in a bad selection.

“Who they pick is extremely important because every distressed housing authority drags the rest of public housing down, and we have to answer for them in Congress,” McKay said.

But the housing commissioners, stung by Gonzalez-Correa’s independent style that left them out of many decisions, “are afraid of a strong director now, and that’s bad news,” McKay added.

“You have a board that is not particularly aggressive and a mayor who is not that interested, and you can only hope that they will hire somebody who can push them both,” he said. The seven-member board, appointed by Bradley and confirmed by the City Council, is charged with setting and implementing policy at the federally funded housing agency.

Some city officials, including an aide to Bradley, challenged McKay’s viewpoint.

Lydia Shayne, a spokeswoman for Bradley, said the mayor has forwarded names of potential candidates to the Housing Authority and met Wednesday with the agency’s chairman, Carl Covitz, to discuss the search. She said Bradley will closely review the candidate recommended by the commission, and added, “I think the mayor has been very outspoken on public housing, especially in the last few years.”

Housing Commissioner Ozie Gonzaque conceded that “only time will tell” if the new director “is another mistake.” However, she vowed to push for a candidate who “believes in working with the tenants in a partnership because anything else will fail. Tenants want integrity and leadership, and that’s what they have asked for all along.”

Even without a permanent director, city officials pointed out, progress has occurred in recent months. Squier, the acting director, announced several days ago that Los Angeles had been awarded $14.5 million in annual federal renovation funds to upgrade its projects--a record amount and twice as much as was awarded in 1988 under Gonzalez-Correa.

BACKGROUND

The Housing Authority operates 21 World War II-era apartment complexes throughout Los Angeles, housing 31,000 of the city’s poorest residents. The agency is funded by the federal government, but its leadership is appointed by the mayor and City Council. In recent years, the Housing Authority has faced severely dwindling federal funds and been hampered by political controversies.