D.C. Housing Authority director Brenda Donald plans to step down after almost two years atop the embattled company, officers introduced Wednesday.
Washington, D.C
D.C. Housing Authority director Brenda Donald to step down
The Housing Authority’s board held a closed session Wednesday afternoon to take care of personnel issues. The board will start a seek for a brand new director, the assertion stated. It didn’t say if the board would appoint an interim director if Donald leaves earlier than the search is full.
Company workers was knowledgeable in latest days that Donald deliberate to go away quickly, in keeping with two individuals with data of her resolution who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of it had not been formally introduced.
Phrase of Donald’s impending departure comes at a crucial time for the company, which is attempting to rectify deficiencies recognized by the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement this previous fall. HUD gave the company till March 31 to appropriate its failures to offer “respectable, secure, and sanitary” housing for its residents in violation of federal necessities, however has since prolonged the deadline to the tip of this month.
Fallout from the report, which was deeply crucial of DCHA’s oversight and governance, elevated Donald’s public profile as she grappled with entrenched challenges. The town additionally remade the company’s governing board. Donald, 68, championed her workers and claimed progress whereas defending herself and her administration from generally withering criticism from D.C. Council members and board commissioners.
Donald and her workers, with the assistance of consultants employed by town, have scrambled to write down a brand new administrative plan for the company — an enormous doc that may alter a variety of insurance policies. Authorized assist organizations that advocate for the Housing Authority’s residents have criticized the tempo of efforts and say revised plans gained’t repair deep-seated challenges that mirror a scarcity of competence in implementing insurance policies already in place.
Earlier than main the Housing Authority, Donald had served as director of town’s Little one and Household Providers Company beneath Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who credit Donald with turning that company round. The mayor, who has been a staunch supporter of Donald, instructed reporters final 12 months that she urged her to remain on and assist the company “maintain its commitments to HUD.” Inexpensive housing and homelessness stay deep-rooted points within the District and a Bowser precedence.
Donald has steered the company by way of a tumultuous interval that noticed Bowser champion laws after the HUD report back to dissolve the Housing Authority’s 13-member governing board — and eliminate DCHA’s most vocal board critics within the course of. The brand new nine-voting-member reform board first met in January over opposition from some public housing tenants, voucher recipients and their advocates. They agreed that the company wanted main adjustments — however stated they need to be undertaken solely after debate and enter from stakeholders and specialists.
Donald took over as interim director of the Housing Authority in June 2021.
Later, she acquired a two-year contract price $275,000 yearly that was scheduled to run out on the finish of September.
All through her tenure, Donald has blamed the issues at what she has referred to as a “badly damaged company” on the earlier administration. “My purpose in taking this job was to stabilize the company so {that a} longer-term director could be arrange for achievement …” Donald stated in a letter final month to the chairman of the D.C. Council housing committee, Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Giant).
Donald inherited an company with entrenched issues. They embrace harmful situations at its properties, equivalent to lead-paint hazards; out-of-code plumbing; water harm and mould; emergency work orders going unaddressed at night time as a consequence of excessive crime; and potential tenants declining models as a result of they concern for his or her security. Additionally they embrace a voucher program that fails to appropriately decide rents to landlords. These points together with many others had been highlighted in final 12 months’s HUD report.
Donald had identified the HUD report was coming for months, however downplayed it to the board as she tried to handle the Housing Authority’s fame. When the company acquired the report in October, Donald declined to launch it publicly, intending to attend till after the Housing Authority shaped a response. However The Washington Publish obtained a replica and detailed its findings.
In her letter to White final month, Donald touted what she stated had been her accomplishments, equivalent to closing on the sale of the company’s headquarters to make method for housing and retail within the NoMa neighborhood, bettering its monetary situation and accelerating inspections and upkeep if its properties.
“Two years in the past, I took this function as a result of I imagine that having a secure and inexpensive place to name dwelling is prime, and I used to be excited to be charged with turning round an company that issues to so many individuals,” Donald stated in a press release included within the announcement. “I’m pleased with the work my workers and I did to place DCHA again heading in the right direction to serve public housing residents and voucher individuals.”
The reform board’s chairman, Raymond Skinner, who additionally served on the earlier board, praised Donald’s accomplishments “within the onerous work of public company transformation,” the company announcement stated.
Donald, nonetheless, failed to attain what she has referred to as her highest precedence — bettering the company’s public housing occupancy fee. Early final 12 months, because the occupancy fee stood at 79 %, Donald pledged to boost it 10 proportion factors by the tip of September. As an alternative, it has fallen beneath 74 %. Donald has stated the company is popping a nook on the difficulty.
However at latest public conferences, a number of authorized assist representatives have stated the company’s efficiency has hit an all-time low. “The state of the company has by no means been extra discouraging or demoralizing than it’s right this moment,” Amanda Korber, a supervising legal professional on the Authorized Help Society of the District of Columbia, instructed the council’s housing committee final month.
Lately, Donald has had a rocky relationship with White, who took over as housing committee chair this 12 months. White appeared to take purpose at Donald throughout a March information convention, saying the company’s “management tradition” didn’t elevate severe points to the board and different oversight our bodies, selecting as a substitute to “quash them quietly.”
White had referred to as the information convention to speak about inside company audit stories that, amongst different allegations, accused a deputy director of the voucher program employed by Donald of getting enterprise pursuits and a relationship with a landlord. However acrimony had constructed between White and Donald over her refusal to reply questions from his workers about who licensed a $41,250 bonus she acquired in January.
Rigidity over the bonus intensified throughout a council listening to final month, when Donald once more refused to reply questions on it and instructed White it was not the council’s enterprise.
“Your obstruction of Council oversight harms the company,” White wrote to Donald afterward, saying the mud up over the bonus was not the one time she’d refused to reply oversight questions. “It means that DCHA is secretive and is hiding info. Whereas I’m upset that you don’t see why this info is related to DC taxpayers or the Committee’s oversight work, you can’t choose and select when the company will probably be clear.”
In her letter to White, Donald famous the necessary work but to be executed on the company. “Whereas there are plans for main, long-term redevelopment throughout our portfolio, these tasks take a few years, however our residents dwell there every single day and will anticipate secure, respectable, and sanitary housing,” she wrote, pledging to finish her tenure having “cured the findings” within the HUD report and having laid the groundwork for a brand new director’s success.