Mayor Harold Washington lashed out at critics of Brenda Gaines, interim executive director of the Chicago Housing Authority, calling for those attacking her leadership of the agency to ”cease and desist.”
Washington`s statements, made at the weekly meeting of Operation PUSH, were his strongest in support of Gaines since last week`s management review of the CHA by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The review sharply criticized Gaines`s management and called her
”fiscally irresponsible” for hiring new staff members while keeping on old ones.
Until January, when the mayor lent Gaines to the CHA to cope with its financial crisis, she had been one of Washington`s top City Hall aides.
Washington said that, in response to the agency`s fiscal crisis, he had installed a top management team, which he called the best in the ”annals of this city and the Chicago Housing Authority.”
While he said he wanted Gaines eventually to return to City Hall, ”I appeal to everyone in the city to cease and desist from attacking this lady because she is qualified to pursue the kind of work that must be done in that housing authority.”
He also attacked CHA critics, such as HUD officials, saying that the federal government failed to finance repairs needed in the agency`s housing units.
But at the same time, he appeared to be calling for an end of the bickering between his administration and HUD.
He told the audience: ”Everyone in the sound of my voice: No more squabbling and screaming and yelling over picayunish, incidental,
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inconsequential, unimportant aspects. Let`s get down to the business of providing adequate housing.”
Washington was joined in his criticism of the federal agency by Jesse Jackson, the Democratic presidential candidate and PUSH founder. Jackson said the federal government has failed to make the financial commitments necessary to support CHA tenants.
”Who can make a brick without straw?” Jackson asked. ”The fact of the matter is, there must be some commitment to the 145,000 human beings who live there.”
Meanwhile, a civic group working closely with public-housing residents has proposed that a crisis-management team be given ”sweeping authority” to make administrative and financial improvements at the agency without fear of political interference.
In a proposal to be presented at a press conference Sunday, the Metropolitan Planning Council says that City Hall, the CHA board and HUD must adopt a hands-off attitude toward day-to-day operations of the housing authority to avoid the political infighting that has crippled the agency in recent years.
”The (crisis) team leader would report to the board, but this person would have to have sweeping authority in making structural and program changes in order to correct fiscal mismanagement and administrative problems within the CHA,” said Gwendolyn Clemons, a planning council official.
Clemons said in an interview Friday that the management team ”must be guaranteed that it can operate in a powerful and efficient manner without political constraints that are at issue now.”
Over the last year, particularly during the recent mayoral campaign, CHA officials have been accused of using the housing authority as a political lever, giving temporary jobs to residents just before the February primary, using residents as deputy registrars and promoting Washington`s candidacy in a CHA newspaper.
Now the city and federal officials are fighting over who is responsible for the worst financial crisis in the housing authority`s 50-year history.
Earlier this month, HUD proposed that a private management firm, selected by HUD, be given control of the agency. The proposal would strip the CHA board –and Washington–of much power at the agency.
On Friday the CHA board passed a resolution rejecting the HUD proposal.