Hud Officials

Federal housing officials violated government regulations last year and made extraordinary efforts to manipulate and control an employment discrimination investigation aimed at HUD's chief investigator, congressional investigators charged in a report released yesterday.Then, they tried to impede an investigation of their actions, according to the document issued by the General Accounting Office.The report was the latest development in a long-running feud between Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo and Inspector General Susan Gaffney.

This is the second in a three-part series on Maryland-based finalists for the Service to America Medals, or Sammies, one of the highest honors bestowed on civil servants. The winners will be announced next month. When Nicole Faison began working in a Baltimore public housing community in the late 1990s, she quickly caught on to what she described as "the game." The more public housing residents earn, the more they pay in rent. So, to keep their rent low, tenants don't always report second and third jobs or welfare and Social Security benefits to housing officials.

A poor management record has cost the Anne Arundel Housing Authoritymillions of dollars in grants to repair and modernize its housing projects.Citing the agency's difficulties with previous grants, theU.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rejected a request for $5 million last August, allocating only emergency money for improvements.Four months later, HUD officials in Baltimore also rejected the agency's long-range plan for improvements -- the cornerstone for securing grants for renovations.

Sherman Offer was taking his daily walk around his Annapolis apartment building one day when the pavement opened and swallowed his leg. The hole that Offer, 66, encountered 2 1/2 years ago was about the size of a basketball. It has grown into a giant sinkhole, slowly eating nearly 40 parking spaces at the Glenwood high-rise for senior citizens -- an inconvenience for residents, an eyesore for the community and a source of frustration for the federally funded agency that manages the building.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has put on hold plans to photograph tenants at Woodside Gardens apartments in Annapolis for a controversial new identification card system.Ina Singer, director of multifamily housing at HUD's Maryland office, said yesterday the management at the complex would be barred from photographing residents until tenants and managers discuss the plan.The HUD directive came three days after the management company ordered all residents age 6 and older to receive customized ID cards.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is once again threatening to reduce Baltimore's annual $22 million Community Development Block Grant because of alleged misuse of federal funds.The city and HUD have been battling for the last two years over Baltimore's oversight of the money, which is used to pay for a myriad of housing rehabilitation and anti-poverty programs.HUD has accused the city of inadequately overseeing the funds, while the city has charged HUD with making unreasonable demands that aren't placed on other cities.

The federal department of Housing and Urban Development said yesterday that it will call off a freeze on federal support for the Council for Equal Business Opportunity, but only if Baltimore agrees to impose strict guidelines for the spending.In a letter addressed to Representative Kweisi Mfume, D-Md.-7th, who has been lobbying HUD officials to restore the federal funds, a HUD assistant secretary said the city's failure to to correct problems in its management of block grant programs "raises a serious question as to the city's ability to substantially // comply with program requirements."

A government auction of 144 Baltimore-area homes went off without a hitch yesterday, two weeks after it was postponed by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development because officials thought it would show preference to investors and developers, not individual homebuyers.Before yesterday's auction at the downtown Hilton Hotel, HUD officials in Washington decided to reverse a department policy that would have required individuals to obtain private financing for their purchases.Kevin Fazenbaker, a Dundalk resident who came to bid on a three-bedroom house in Westminster, said yesterday that he supports HUD's policy change.

The sprawling Uplands Apartments site in West Baltimore would be redeveloped into a $67 million project containing roughly equal numbers of affordable and market-rate homes under a preliminary proposal drafted by city housing officials. In a letter sent yesterday to the director of the Baltimore office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city proposed putting 381 detached, semidetached, townhouse and co-op units on the 46-acre parcel that now contains nearly vacated subsidized apartment units.

More than 300 city employees could lose their jobs under an order from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that bars Baltimore from spending $7 million to $8 million in block grant money on salaries and fringe benefits.The city responded to yesterday's order by filing suit in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, asking the court to nullify the ban on spending the Community Development Block Grant money.HUD officials say the order was issued because the city has failed to implement a time-keeping system that adequately jTC monitors the hours worked by employees who are paid with the grant money.

The federal government is attempting to oust the management agency of Bywater Mutual Homes Inc., saying it has neglected the Annapolis public housing community. Residents and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials have agreed to upgrade and repair the 35-year-old townhouse complex - on HUD's condition that the Whetstone Co. step aside as the manager. Whetstone, which is fighting the terms of the agreement, is scheduled to meet with the two sides Friday at HUD headquarters in Washington.

Vinnie Quayle, executive director of the St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, drives north on Loch Raven Boulevard, turning west just before he hits the city-county line into the Northeast Baltimore community of Idlewood. He stops first at an end-of-group brick rowhouse with water damage on the first-floor ceiling that St. Ambrose bought last month. Then he stops at another two-story end unit that the nonprofit group bought in October, where workers are putting the finishing touches on such improvements as a new deck, brass mailbox, refinished floors and recessed lighting.

Baltimore's troubled subsidized rental program has until June 30 to come up to standards or be taken over by the federal government, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development official revealed yesterday. The revelation that HUD officials have directed that the city's Section 8 program must "get a passing grade as soon as possible, certainly by June 30" or be put into receivership was made by William Tamburrino, the federal housing agency's local director of public housing programs, in a federal court trial.

Responding to a directive from Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staged a surprise inspection yesterday at the dilapidated Kingsley Park housing complex in eastern Baltimore County. A spokeswoman for Mikulski said HUD officials were informed late last week that the senator has received numerous tenant complaints about deplorable living conditions at Kingsley Park, a World War II-era property owned by Baltimore-based Landex Corp. "The senator told HUD she wants them to deal with Kingsley Park and she wants it done promptly," said Amy Hagovsky, press aide to Mikulski, the ranking minority member on the appropriations subcommittee that will oversee HUD's proposed $31.3 billion budget for 2004.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development bought a sprawling low-income West Baltimore apartment complex at a foreclosure sale yesterday, setting the stage for a summer-long discussion of how the highly desirable site should be redeveloped. Although officials of the federal housing agency said last week that there was considerable interest in the Uplands Apartments from private developers, HUD was the only bidder to show up at the foreclosure sale in front of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse downtown.

The sprawling Uplands Apartments site in West Baltimore would be redeveloped into a $67 million project containing roughly equal numbers of affordable and market-rate homes under a preliminary proposal drafted by city housing officials. In a letter sent yesterday to the director of the Baltimore office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city proposed putting 381 detached, semidetached, townhouse and co-op units on the 46-acre parcel that now contains nearly vacated subsidized apartment units.

A government auction of 144 Baltimore-area homes was abruptly canceled yesterday when federal officials in Washington learned that the company they had hired to oversee the auction would have shut out many individual homebuyers.The last-minute decision by the Department of Housing and Urban Development left more than 100 potential buyers waiting for answers at the downtown Hilton Hotel and capped several days of confusion about the auction."We're very disappointed," said Donald Wheeler, 24, of Pasadena.

Druid Park Lake Drive resident David Lehman wasn't disappointed to see Baltimore lose a piece of its history yesterday. As demolition continued on Lakeside Apartments, one of the city's first major public housing complexes, Lehman said he welcomed its downfall. "It was a breeding ground for brats and rats," said Lehman, who has lived next to the buildings in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood for 10 years. National Wrecking Corp. of Clinton began demolishing the three-story apartment buildings at 747, 735, and 825 Druid Park Lake Drive last week.

Federal officials oppose the proposed conversion of a crime-troubled public housing high-rise in the heart of Baltimore's cultural district into market-rate housing that Mount Vernon neighborhood leaders believe would help revive the struggling community. Mayor Martin O'Malley urged U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials yesterday to be more flexible and allow the conversion of Stafford Towers at 716 Washington Place, a landmark, 106-year-old former hotel that houses 96 residents in subsidized apartments.