For so many years, the Housing Authority of New Haven was referred to as “the troubled Housing Authority of New Haven,” that anyone could be forgiven for thinking that was part of its official name. The authority’s new (since December) executive director, Jimmy Miller (pictured), said at the April meeting of the agency’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday that he has plans to remove that adjective from the last of its programs.
“Troubled” wasn’t part of HANH’s official name, but it was an official designation of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to describe an agency plagued by substandard conditions, a backlog of repairs, and violence. The authorityclimbed out of that hole as far as its public developments are concerned, but its Section 8 program, in which eligible tenants can rent apartments from private landlords, is still on the watch list.
Commission Chairman William DeMayo (pictured) quizzed Miller at Tuesday’s meeting, respectfully, on his plans to redeem that program. “We are wasting time, energy and money if we fix it and then in a year or two it’s broken again,” DeMayo said. Miller assured him the plan, which HUD has until September of this year to respond to, will do the trick.
During the public comment period, resident Ida Wells (pictured) said she’d heard rumors that the authority’s new chief of security, John Prokop, Jr., wanted to get rid of the building attendant program, in which residents like her earn stipends by watching the front entrance to their buildings.
Addressing Prokop in the meeting, she said she wanted an answer from “the horse’s mouth.” He responded that he never said he wanted to end the program.
Prokop (pictured) also told the commissioners that he’s talked with Police Chief Cisco Ortiz about the “officer in residence” program, in which officers can apply to live in different housing developments rent-free and provide additional security. Tragedy struck a few years ago when a cop just moving into a development on Howard Avenue shot and killed a resident who he felt was threatening him. Prokop said the program isn’t providing “the best bang for the buck” and that both the police department and the housing authority are reviewing the selection process for choosing the officers.
All three residents who spoke during the meeting said residents should have more say on decisions that affect them. In an interview outside the meeting, Prokop said residents do have a voice in whether an officer comes to live in their complex, and, if so, who it should be. “If 100 percent of them are against an officer moving in, I’d want to know why and I’d take that into consideration,” he said. But they have no veto. “It’s a collaborative effort. No one party has the final say on how we are providing security.”
In another matter, HANH commissioners voted to submit a Hope VI grant application to HUD to renovate the Brookside housing development. The city struck out two previous times on Brookside. DeMayo said New Haven can bolster its position by pointing to its two previous successful Hope VI applications, for Elm Haven (now rebuilt as Monterey Place) and Quinnipiac Terrace.
