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HUD audit's focus includes Sharif Street and PHA legal bills, sources say

On June 20, 2007, a caravan of buses delivered hundreds of Philadelphia protesters to the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol to rally against steep cuts in spending on public housing.

Sharif Street (right) with his father, John F. Street, former mayor and former chairman of the Philadelphia Housing Authority board. (Jessica Griffin / File Photo)
Sharif Street (right) with his father, John F. Street, former mayor and former chairman of the Philadelphia Housing Authority board. (Jessica Griffin / File Photo)Read more

On June 20, 2007, a caravan of buses delivered hundreds of Philadelphia protesters to the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol to rally against steep cuts in spending on public housing.

Wearing protest T-shirts, residents of the Philadelphia Housing Authority shouted in a call-and-response:

"What did we come for?"

"Our money!"

 On a platform in front, standing among rally organizers, was Sharif Street, an outside lawyer for PHA and son of the agency's board chairman, then-Mayor John F. Street.

From the Capitol, Sharif Street joined protesters as they took their complaints eight blocks away to the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which went into a lockdown mode when they arrived.

When Sharif Street returned to Philadelphia, his law firm at the time - Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen L.L.P. - sent PHA a bill for his services: $3,360 for 14 hours of work that June day, according to records obtained by The Inquirer.

That was the most he billed the PHA in a single day while doing work for the agency between 2004 and 2008.

In an interview, Sharif Street said he "didn't bill PHA for that protest. I was very careful."

He said that, rather than taking a bus, he went to Washington by train and did PHA legal work on board. He said he also did legal work on the return trip and during a lunchtime break from the demonstration.

His 14-hour bill also included time that he spent at a Washington housing conference the same day as the protest, he said.

At the conference, Sharif Street said, he met former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, who was honored at an evening awards ceremony, as well as elected officials and HUD administrators.

"I was in D.C. for at least 20 hours," he said, adding that he stayed after midnight.

Sharif Street's work for PHA and Wolf Block's contract with the agency are part of the focus of a federal audit of the housing agency's high spending on outside legal services, sources say. They say the audit is expected to be released this week.

Overall, during the 2004-08 period, Wolf Block billed PHA $778,052 for 3,295 hours of work Sharif Street did for PHA, billing records show.

One protest organizer, Vincent Morris, says Sharif Street was with the group from about 7:30 a.m. until 4:30 or 5 p.m., helping to arrange details with the police in Washington for rerouting buses and talking with PHA's then-executive director, Carl R. Greene, who addressed the rally.

"He was kind of strategizing, talking with Carl," said Morris, a former aide to Greene. "He was there all day."

According to one person familiar with his work at Wolf Block, Sharif Street reported directly to Greene.

When asked about reporting to Greene, Sharif Street said he reported to his supervisors at Wolf Block.

Morris, who is now suing PHA, alleging that he was forced out of the agency because he was a whistle-blower, said he and Sharif Street worked closely together during the day of the rally.

He said he never saw Sharif Street working on anything other than the protest organization.

Michael P. Kelly, PHA's new administrative receiver, has declared a new era of accountability and openness at the authority.

In the case of Sharif Street, however, he said he was advised by the agency's inside legal counsel not to disclose the nature of the legal work that the younger Street was handling on June 20, 2007.

"I've been advised by counsel that disclosure of even that matter crosses the line of attorney-client privilege," Kelly said.

In legal billings, PHA redacted descriptions of the legal matters Sharif Street worked on. In the documents, 90 percent of his work is listed only as "Matter 151797," for which PHA paid $699,390.

Kelly said lawyers told him not to even describe an inch-long, single-line summation of that work that was redacted from a document released by the agency.

PHA spokeswoman Nichole Tillman would say only that Sharif Street worked on government relations and real estate issues.

Harriet Lessy, a public-relations specialist who has worked on political campaigns, said Sharif Street started working with Wolf Block in 1999 and did no PHA work during his initial years in the firm.

Even in 2004, his PHA work was limited, she said. He had other clients, including Amtrak, and did real estate work for developers, she said.

After 2004, Lessy said, 55 percent of his work was for PHA.

The jump in Sharif Street's PHA work came after his father became chairman of the PHA board in April 2004.

John Street repeatedly voted for resolutions for Wolf Block to get contracts from 2004 to 2008. Ethics specialists say his involvement in awarding work to his son's law firm may have violated state ethics rules governing public officials.

The former mayor has said he thought he had HUD's permission to vote on the resolutions. HUD rejects that contention.

On Friday, John Street and all the other PHA board members resigned. HUD has taken over PHA and will run it for at least a year.

After he resigned, John Street told reporters that his son earned about $100,000 a year with Wolf Block.

But he said that he believed that amount was a typical salary for attorneys, and that Sharif Street received no special benefit because of his job as PHA board chairman.

Sharif Street left Wolf Block at the end of 2008. The firm folded early the next year.