As a prize for turning what was considered the second worst public housing agency in the country into a model for the nation, Claire Freeman was given HUD’s Greatest Improved Performance Award six months ago.
Now, the 51-year-old Cleveland native who made the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority one of the best in the nation, may get the chance to compete for the prize again.
Federal officials now in charge of the Chicago Housing Authority say Freeman is their top candidate for the job of executive director.
Although Kevin Marchman, former head of the Denver Housing Authority and now a high-ranking official in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been named the temporary executive director, Freeman was interviewed this week for the permanent post.
Freeman could not be reached for comment Wednesday about whether she is considering a possible move to Chicago.
In Cleveland, some hope Freeman stays put.
“I would die. I would die because the work isn’t done yet,” lamented Mary Ellen Williams, 63, vice president of the Progressive Action Council, one of the leading tenants organizations in the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, which includes Cleveland.
“I would hate to see her go. That would be just like making a dress and not finishing it, and I don’t think she’s that kind of person,” Williams said.
But if the dress isn’t exactly finished in Cleveland, the CHA is pretty much in tatters right now; and Freeman seems to be the kind of tailor the federal government needs to make it ready to wear.
In five years in Cleveland, Freeman established herself as a tough administrator, whose early months were marked with strife and controversy when she dumped 11 of the agency’s top administrators and refused to pay bills after learning that some of them had been paid three or four times before.
She also got into some political disputes when she used agency stationery to write letters to its 1,000 employees urging them to register and then vote.
Tenants groups picketed her, political rivals reviled her, but, five years later, she had made the troubled Cleveland housing agency such a model of efficiency that HUD gave her its top improvement award.
Secretary Henry Cisneros sent the typed letter of praise, and, at the bottom, he wrote, “You are the proof that a single individual can make a difference.”
When the Cleveland agency was removed from HUD’s official “troubled” list in 1993, she was cited for cleaning up a bookkeeping system that was virtually “unauditable” when she took over; boosting the occupancy rate to 96 percent, one of the best in the nation; and increasing the security staff from 14 in 1990 to more than 240.
But that was in Cleveland, where no public housing buildings are taller than three stories, where only 17,000 residents dwell in about 12,000 units, and where gangs have not taken hold of entire buildings. In Chicago, the CHA has dozens of high-rise buildings and about 40,000 units, about 86,000 residents that they know of, and rival gangs laying claim to sprawling areas of public housing.
In Cleveland, a recurring word used to describe Freeman’s tenure is “vision,” the same word often used to describe the policies of Vincent Lane, whom she is expected to replace soon.
“She’s certainly a person of vision,” said Scott Pollock, Freeman’s executive assistant at the Cuyahoga authority. “I don’t think she really knows the word impossible, because certainly when she came here five years ago, we were in a very different position.”
Cleveland City Council member Frank Jackson agrees.
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“She’s more than a landlord. She deals with the entire, holistic needs of the people she serves,” said Jackson.
“I hope you don’t get her. It’s nothing personal,” he said.
Reminiscing about her first year in charge of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, Freeman last year was quoted as saying, “It was the worst year of my life.”
But that, of course, was when she went to work for the second worst public housing agency in the country. The CHA, the federal government decided last week, is the worst.