Senate: Philadelphia Housing Authority needs that $50 million
The Senate passed an amendment yesterday that could restore $50 million in federal money to the Philadelphia Housing Authority that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had threatened to cut off.
The Senate passed an amendment yesterday that could restore $50 million in federal money to the Philadelphia Housing Authority that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had threatened to cut off.
The "sense of the Senate" amendment, which must be approved by the House and President Bush, is designed to keep the money flowing to PHA for one year while the two agencies resolve a bitter legal dispute.
The threatened cut was viewed as retaliation by HUD officials against PHA Executive Director Carl Greene.
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson came under fire this week from Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey amid the disclosure of e-mails between two senior HUD officials discussing the retaliation.
The January 2007 e-mail exchange - in which the officials discuss withholding federal dollars to make Greene's "life less happy" - occurred after Greene refused to transfer two parcels of vacant city land to developer Kenny Gamble, a friend of Jackson's.
That same day, Specter said, HUD decided to cut funding to the authority, claiming that the city's housing units are in violation of disabled-access requirements.
"That's a little too remarkable to be a coincidence," Specter said yesterday during a news conference at 30th Street Station.
"I want to get the matter settled," Specter said. "The importance of public housing is paramount here to see to it that the people who can't afford housing can have public housing - and $50 million goes a long way. This action by the Senate . . . should be very, very persuasive with HUD to extend the time."
In a lawsuit PHA filed against Jackson and HUD in December, Greene claims the funding cut was in retaliation for not giving Gamble's development group the South Philadelphia properties it wanted. HUD has denied that.
Specter said that he and Casey tried to broker a deal between HUD and PHA last year, but couldn't do it.
"Now it's in federal court costing the taxpayers a lot of money because the taxpayers are paying the lawyers for HUD and paying the lawyers for PHA," he said.
Specter said his amendment calls for maintaining the current "Moving to Work" agreement between HUD and PHA, which is set to expire at the end of this month. The one-year extension would provide a "cooling-off period" so the two sides could resolve their "acrimonious dispute" out of court, he said.
If the agreement expires, PHA estimates it will lose $50 million, which will adversely impact 84,000 low-income, city public-housing residents.
Specter said he hopes HUD will respond to Senate pressure and extend the deadline.
"But if that doesn't do it," he warned, "I'm putting them on notice: I intend to bring it up on the appropriation bill with their funding to make it binding." *
