Public housing residents claim conditions worsen under private management

INDIANAPOLIS — The Laurelwood Apartments on Indianapolis’ southside are managed by a property services firm but they are co-owned by private equity investors and the Indianapolis Housing Agency which is now being overseen by the Department of Housing and Urban Development out of Washington, D.C., which means, everybody’s in charge and no one’s in charge.

Residents of the public housing complex told FOX59/CBS4 that last month they were mystified by eviction letters claiming they owed more than $10,000 in back rent and are now terrified after a basketball court shooting Sunday night left five people wounded.

”Any kid could’ve got shot that night. Thank god it didn’t happen but they could’ve got shot that night,” said Kaleiona Barry, a 12-year resident of Laurelwood. ”There’s people who are supposed to have been evicted that haven’t been evicted. There’s been a lot of people that have been out here that don’t even live out here. That they’ve just been letting sit out here, cause trouble to kids and do stuff to peoples’ kids.”

While Barry complains that the management company hasn’t evicted troublemakers, it has been quick to threaten neighbors such as herself with the possibility of being tossed out of their homes due to its own faulty recordkeeping and failure to requalify residents for subsidized rent.

”All of a sudden now they say we owe all this money but if we don’t pay it, we’re evicted,” she said, presenting the letter she received in June from the Hayes Gibson Property Services Company which succeeded IHA as property managers at the insistence of private investors. ”They told us to stop paying rent because there was nobody in the office. And when Hayes and Gibson got in there they didn’t let nobody know to start paying rent again.”

During a meeting of IHA’s slimmed-down Board of Commissioners, Hayes & Gibson CEO Alexandra Jackiw explained the problems her company has had managing eight IHA properties over the last two years.

”Our big focus right now is getting current residents recertified and getting vacant units turned so that we can increase occupancy,” she said. “The average occupancy at the properties currently averages around 50% with the exception of 16 Park where we’re closer to 60%.”

Under IHA’s systemwide management as recently as three years ago, occupancy rates for subsidized housing units nudged above 90% to near HUD minimums.

At the four properties still under IHA management, the occupancy rate is 88%.

“We have had four inspections in the last three-and-a-half months,” said Jackiw. “Two of which we failed both at 16 Park and at Twin Hills. Blackburn and we passed at Georgetown. And we passed at Laurelwood/Rowney. We do have health and safety issues on an ongoing basis. We’re getting reports from the Marion County Board of Health and we’re responding to those as expeditiously as possible so they can be repaired and reinspected.”

Barry said Hayes & Gibson ought to take a look inside the apartments of herself and her neighbors.

”Our ceilings are falling in, there’s people living with mold in their house,” she said. “This has been going on and hasn’t been fixed. Our railings are falling apart.”

Sandra Bailey was a longtime Laurelwood resident who moved out but still advocates for public housing residents.

”You got boarded up units. I’ll tell you, for instance, the family investment center,” she said. ”That center is demolished today. Even with the basketball court has been torn down.”

Later, Bailey took her complaints to the IHA Board, which consists of a single appointed chairperson and is staffed by an interim chief operations officer and a recently appointed HUD chief executive officer.

”The Indianapolis Housing Agency gave you all this money,” she told the Board. “My question is: what is being done at our properties that the money that was given to Hayes and Gibson for our properties?”

Indianapolis Housing Security was removed from the properties leaving their safety and security instead up to IMPD and the management company.

”I did request the police report online portal from the Indianapolis Police Department and I’m waiting for that,” Jackiw told the board. “We do have preliminary information and we’ve submitted an incident report to the Indianapolis Housing Authority regarding the situation that happened at Laurelwood on Sunday evening. If we identify that residents have been involved we will serve eviction notices to those individuals.”

Hayes & Gibson and appointed HUD CEO Willie Garrett both refused to comment when questioned about the Laurelwood conditions by FOX59/CBS4.

FOX59/CBS4’s Russ McQuaid was also ordered off the public housing complex by Laurelwood management which claimed the site was private property.

The IHA Board was told by staff that the agency is slowly recovering from its second data breach in less than two years, will soon migrate all its data onto the cloud for better cyber security, hard-line telephones are being installed in its headquarters for faster resident and landlord response.

Additionally, a new Section 8 landlord web portal is being developed as private residence owners complain they are not now receiving payments on time as recertifications to qualify existing residents are backed up due to IHA’s inadequate data system. Section 8 occupancies are at 82%, a full 10 percentage points below HUD’s bare minimum for occupancy while thousands of qualified low-income persons and families await housing vouchers, and two major IHA properties downtown will soon be secured by a $250,000 security and camera system.

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