By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – There is a reason why residents and neighbors of the Newark Housing Authority’s 45 citywide here have been seeing inspectors making their house calls since March 1. (Please note that we are discussing city properties here, and not those privately owned.)
The inspectors are also examining the buildings’ infrastructure. Conditions, including security measures and elevator operations, will be more than noted.
Whatever the inspectors find will be brought to the building’s manager, who – said NHA Executive Director Leonard J. Spicer Feb. 27 – will relay the reports to the agency’s headquarters at 500 Broad St.
The building manager, furthermore, can make repair recommendations – but the appropriate person at 500 Broad will issue the work order onwards from March 1.
“There’s an objective individual who doesn’t know you,” said Spicer of the new centralized repair process to the Municipal Council Feb. 27, “that’s going to take your work order, that’s now going to ensure that the work is completed.”
Spicer, a former US Housing and Urban Development Department official, was briefing Newark’s elders on what he and the agency are doing to meet his former employer’s corrective goals in a two-year period. The agency head who came aboard Oct. 30 said that he and federal inspectors met the week before to map out a corrective action plan.
This CAP is the result of an HUD report, issued Nov. 8, that called NHA “a troubled agency.” with an overall score of 39 out of 100 indicators. The scoring, completed at the end of Fiscal Year 2022, rated the agency 22 out of 40 for physical condition.
The report’s scores got lower in other categories. NHA scored 12 out of 25 in management, five out of 10 in capital funds and zero out of 25 in finances.
“The Fed,” in summary, gave NHA 24 months to take corrective action – or go into receivership. A receiver would then be appointed to make the needed changes to get the institution upright.
“We’ve 12 months to complete 50 percent of those milestones,” said Spicer, “and another 12 months to complete the other 50 percent to bring our (overall) score to 60. If we fail to do so, the federal government can come in and take possession of the agency.”
One capital needs objective, said Spicer, is to get nearly 600 units repaired and ready for occupation. NHA currently has an 87 percent occupation rate.
“At least 600 families that could be received into our system,” said Spicer, “that could have housing that do not have housing.”
More housing units online and ready for leasing means that NHA’s waitlist backlog would be cut. Its 2024 annual plan has that backlog standing at 10,448 people.
HUD gave the agency zero in finances in part because it had not received NHA audits in a timely fashion. Spicer said he was told that NHA asked its federal overseers for “a number of extensions” in the past.
Getting NHA’s finances in line means that rent collection must be done. Employees and contractors, in turn, must be qualified for their jobs.
“We’re custodians of federal tax dollars,” said Spicer. “There cannot be patronage positions, no-show jobs. It’s an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.”
Irvingtonians may have recognized Spicer’s name for he was once HUD’s Public Housing Recovery Administrator for the Irvington Housing Authority. When the IHA entered receivership in April 2022, he was appointed its executive director and co-chairman of its Board of Commissioners.
The former member of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division had worked for Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development. The DePaul University public policy undergraduate and Fordham construction management master succeeded former Passaic public housing commissioner and former West Orange councilman Victor Cirillo.
NHA, which goes back to the U.S. Works Project Administration of the 1930s, includes 10 elderly/disabled developments and scattered site housing.
