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New Hillsborough Housing Leader Faces Challenges

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By JOHN W. ALLMAN

jallman@tampatrib.com

Published: January 2, 2009

TAMPA - Hillsborough County's affordable housing program exists to help low-income homebuyers.

Since 1999, though, the office has consistently failed its purpose, and the people it is supposed to shelter.

The office, for years, was stuck in perpetual crisis, besieged by allegations of misconduct, hindered by investigations and lawsuits, and undermined by a revolving door of directors.

Problems went unreported, and action, if taken, didn't occur quickly.

State and federal housing funds were lost or mismanaged, housing projects stalled or were shuttered and, in some cases, money meant to assist needy residents had to be returned.

It's unclear how many people could have been helped by the affordable housing office if the problems had been resolved earlier.

The problems culminated in October 2007, when more than $2 million in federal home funds was taken away from the county because of mismanagement.

County Administrator Pat Bean is hoping a recent reshuffling of the affordable housing management team will stabilize the department into the future. Valmarie Turner, formerly the contracts manager, was promoted this month to director of the department. Affordable housing officer Howie Carroll, who some county commissioners blamed for the $2 million loss last year, was transferred to the county's Debt Management Department.

Although Turner will run day-to-day operations in the office, Bean assigned Mike Merrill, the county's utility and commerce administrator, to provide additional oversight with the title affordable housing officer.

An internal audit, released earlier this month, did not evaluate the county's effectiveness or success in creating new housing or assisting low-income residents. However, it bluntly describes a broken system that failed to assist people in need.

The audit mentions one affordable housing project in particular: Rainbow Oasis Apartments. The county lost more than $730,000 after federal housing officials determined the apartments were sold in violation of federal guidelines.

"Anytime you have to pay back dollars, you are taking dollars away from helping people," said Carroll, the former affordable housing officer.

The money lost could have helped provide down-payment assistance for about 14 families, at an average of $50,000 each, Carroll said. Or it could have been used to build an affordable apartment development, which usually average 200 units, he said.

Problems Remain Unresolved

Even today, affordable housing officials are struggling to get things right.

According to the audit, the county remains without a system to properly manage state and federal grants. Vital information, such as the number of residents receiving financial assistance, can't be compiled. Officials are unable to provide key financial data on request, such as the total dollars spent on affordable housing projects.

A federal investigation into the program and its employees also is ongoing.

The audit places blame on former employees and managers, not administrators.

"The county's Affordable Housing assistance programs have historically been plagued with unprincipled management and business practices," the audit found. "Many of the problems date back before 2003."

It points to housing employees, specifically those who worked from 2004 to 2006, as being largely responsible. They were allowed to work with little oversight or input from their department director, the report said.

It also clears top officials such as Bean for not taking action sooner. Bean, the audit says, was unaware of the extent of problems in the department from 2004 to late 2007.

In an interview with The Tampa Tribune, however, she said that wasn't entirely true.

"I don't want to make it seem like I didn't know there were any issues out there," she said last week. "No, no, no."

Bean's Connections Detailed

As a deputy county administrator, from 1999 to 2003, Bean had direct knowledge of major housing issues, or received regular briefings on them.

It was a lengthy list highlighted by:

•A 1999 audit that found sloppy bookkeeping, which could have allowed for misuse of millions in state housing grants.

•A 2001 investigation that delved into allegations of a long-standing conflict of interest between a former housing director and a local nonprofit that was supposed to place poor residents in homes. The agency received millions in housing grants.

•A 2002 federal whistleblower lawsuit that outlined favoritism for certain housing developers, who received millions in state and federal funds meant to help the poor, and accused housing officials of retaliating against employees who complained.

Bean was promoted to county administrator in late 2003, a few months after Dexter Barge, a Persian Gulf War veteran and longtime county employee, was put in charge of code enforcement and affordable housing.

Under Barge, according to the audit, the Housing and Community Code Enforcement department spiraled out of control.

Affordable housing "was kind of frustrating," he said. There was no flow chart to dictate how work got completed. Barge also said he lacked experience overseeing affordable housing programs.

"As a director, my in-depth day-to-day oversight, I just didn't have the time to do that," Barge said recently.

He relied on staff instead.

"The trust he placed in these managers was misplaced," the audit found, "and led to many of the problems that currently plague the affordable housing organization."

Dysfunctional Department

Barge's tenure as department director was unsteady at best. The housing office became divided by bickering and in-fighting. Things got so bad, he said, he didn't know if he could trust his staff.

In November 2006, the county split the department. Barge was named director of code enforcement, and Carroll, a former assistant housing director in Clearwater, was hired to become the county's first affordable housing officer.

The audit, in its executive summary, says that Bean still had no clue about how far the housing office had fallen.

"According to the county administrator," it states, "she was unaware that the housing assistance program was in disrepair, the extent of poor performance during the 2004 to 2006 timeframe or that the loss of funds announced in 2007 was a possibility until it was too late for her to take corrective action."

Bean's version is entirely different. She said that auditors asked limited questions, focusing primarily on the missing funds. She knew in late 2006 that the office needed help, and she told Carroll to make it right.

"Let me just describe what was happening out there when Howie came onboard," she said. "We had told him that we thought there were issues out there that needed to be addressed, but we didn't know the extent of them. I knew there were problems."

Reporter John W. Allman can be reached at (813) 259-7915.

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