Resident and Community Rights to “Active Participation Throughout” are Totally Violated Has MPHA Grown Beyond Accountability to the Community? A Public Letter from Retired Attorney Peter Brown

 

The pro-forma, after-the-fact “process” that MPHA is providing for Elliot Twin Tower residents in two short back-to-back “information” meetings scheduled for August 8 and 9 is, of course, worse than no process at all.

MPHA’s scheduled meetings with Elliot Twin Towers residents, meetings at which residents will receive MPHA’s official line about HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, the program that MPHA has already decided to use, without required resident and community participation, to convert Elliot Twin Towers from public housing status to privatized Section 8 properties, are no substitute for meaningful consultation. In fact, MPHA’s entire redevelopment process to-date (including MPHA’s “Strategic Vision and Capital Plan for 2018- 2020” adopted May 26, 2018 and subsequently-called Elliot Twin Tower resident meetings) is illegitimate, having been conducted in complete violation of the resident and public engagement requirements that MPHA publicly adopted last year.

In guidelines formally adopted by MPHA Commissioners on May 24, 2017, MPHA promised to promote active participation of residents and community members throughout the redevelopment planning and implementation process.1 In flagrant violation of these public engagement requirements, MPHA has blithely put a cynical cart before the horse, making key redevelopment decisions without resident and community knowledge and input to convert all its public housing properties to Section 8 properties under HUD’s RAD program, a program that MPHA leadership must know (but is unlikely to have shared with Commissioners and residents!) has received a strongly-worded review from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in February 2018. The GAO found, for example, that HUD has failed to put in place responsible measures to ensure that resident rights are safeguarded under RAD.2

What is to be done? How about restorative justice?

Justice requires that MPHA’s violations of its resident and community participation obligations must have consequences. For every wrong, a remedy. And MPHA officials have publicly said (while perhaps not ever believing a day of reckoning would come) that they expects the community to hold them accountable to comply with these guidelines.

A reasonable restorative accountability consequence would be that MPHA do more than simply acknowledge its transgression, say “Oops! Sorry!” and move ahead with its secretly formulated RAD-reliant plans that residents and community members have no hand in evaluating and shaping. MPHA may yet be influenced to see the wisdom and justice of doing a complete re-set: to begin its redevelopment process over, this time proceeding as required by MPHA’s own guidelines, in an open, transparent fashion, actively encouraging resident and community participation throughout, from beginning (open selection of consultants to aid the process, if any) to conclusion, as MPHA’s guidelines require.

What a concept! Doing what they said they would do. Keeping their word.

Peter W. Brown

See also statement of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), member and former chair of the National Black Caucus (March 22, 2018):

Despite RAD’s potential to have serious, negative impacts on tenants (such as changes in rent or relocation), HUD is failing to adequately track these impacts and monitor potential violations of resident rights under relevant statutes and HUD policies.

 

1: See “MPHA’s “Guiding Principles for Redevelopment and Capital Investments at MPHA” online at http://mphaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Guiding-Principles-for-Redevelopment- and-Capital-Investments-at-MPHA.pdf in which MPHA pledges that it . . .
  • “…will engage in a public, portfolio-wide planning process to assess the needs and mission- oriented opportunities at all properties owned by MPHA. . .”
  • “…will encourage active and meaningful resident and community participation throughout the planning and implementation process, . . .”
  • “…intends that residents participate and contribute to the planning and design discussions.”
2: See US General Accountability Office (GAO) Report (February 22, 2018):
HUD does not systematically use its data systems to track effects of RAD conversions on resident households (such as changes in rent and income, or relocation) or monitor use of all resident safeguards. ….. Without a comprehensive review of household information and procedures for fully monitoring all resident safeguards, HUD cannot fully assess the effects of RAD on residents. ….. HUD officials stated that HUD intends to develop procedures to identify and respond to risks to long-term affordability, including default or foreclosure in RAD properties. However, HUD has not yet done so.