A grand jury probe will determine whether any laws were broken when the city Housing Authority awarded $25.6 million worth of non-bid contracts to patch up vandalized and boarded-up public housing units. But at the very least that money gave taxpayers poor value, according to a three-part series of articles starting today in The Sun.
Much of the repair work was performed sloppily -- if at all -- by a motley group of contractors that included cronies of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke or Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III. Overcharges were common. This pattern was discovered last summer by federal auditors; the series digs deeper into the irregularities.
America's public housing is a mess. Some cities have only a more manageable mess than others. That's why the Clinton administration has announced a plan to move gradually away from public housing to a voucher system that would allow LTC tenants to find their lodgings in the commercial housing market. The presumption is that private landlords could accommodate public housing tenants -- and maintain a satisfactory inventory of low-income units -- more cheaply than federally financed local bureaucracies.
Baltimore's non-bid repair program was started in response to large-scale vandalism and vacancies, mostly in scattered-site housing units. What began as a $1 million effort soon ballooned to a boondoggle costing more than $25 million.
Non-bid contracts were awarded without adequate background checks to firms with little or no construction experience. The Housing Authority's staff became so overwhelmed the necessary inspections were not done properly. As a result, contractors, many of whom had been selected according to questionable criteria, botched repairs or submitted bills for phantom work.
It proved a disgrace: The Housing Authority paid as much as $100,000 to repair units in areas where homes sell for less than $30,000. And yet several of these homes were abandoned and vandalized just months after being renovated.
As Baltimore is about to begin demolishing antiquated public housing high-rises, this series suggests that the problem is not buildings but people -- both managers and tenants. Unless these people problems are solved first, any newly constructed buildings are likely to suffer the same fate as the homes described in the series.