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Washington.BizJournals.com reports: Public housing in the District was so badly managed that it had gone into court-ordered receivership when Michael Kelly arrived in 2000 to take over as executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority. Eight years later, in December, he received an award from Kenneth Donohue, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who called the authority under Kelly “one of the best programs in the country.” Now Kelly is arguing that public housing should be included in an economic stimulus package.
You are president of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) and wrote congressional leaders to ask that any economic stimulus package include money for public housing upgrades. It’s a request for $5 billion nationwide to look at projects that would modernize or develop public housing.
The maintenance backlog for public housing nationally is $32 billion. How did you decide on $5 billion? I think we’re looking at it as a down payment toward the larger need. One of the things we are very aware of is the president-elect’s desire to have projects that can create jobs and money that can be put on the street quickly, with accountability, and that can have green and sustainable components to it. We think that this $5 billion is the range of dollars that large public housing authorities can utilize quickly.
D.C. has an estimated backlog of $150 million. How much might D.C. get and what could it be used for? We put in a submission for about $30 million that we could actually spend within the next 120 days. Across the country [public housing] received $2.4 billion for the capital fund for the year, so this request would be double an annual capital fund appropriation.
