At age 29, I'd been appointed by George H.W. Bush's administration to oversee HUD activities in five states and the District of Columbia. The HUD secretary was the conservative stalwart and former pro football star Jack Kemp. Eight months into the job, I recall sitting in his office seeking approval for the Philadelphia takeover. We had recently taken similar steps in Chester, and the early results were encouraging.
The real problem in Chester and Philadelphia - though it could be blamed on Republicans in the former and Democrats in the latter - was the same: patronage.
The situation in Philadelphia was deplorable. Back in 1992, the authority's vacancy rate was 20 percent, even though more than 13,000 were on the waiting list for public housing. Why? The PHA was so incompetent that it was taking more than four years to get vacant units reoccupied.
The three towers at Southwark Plaza, in South Philadelphia, still stood, and they were a monument to waste, fraud, and abuse. Two of them were vacant, and although $6 million had been spent on a renovation project, architectural plans hadn't even been drawn up.
A HUD audit at the time inspected 87 city public-housing units and found that 86 failed safety and sanitation standards.
Meanwhile, many were feeding at the PHA trough. Its budget at the time was $200 million, and it has risen to about $350 million in the decades since.
On the merits, a federal takeover seemed like the right thing to do in 1992. And looking back, I can see the turnaround effort also suited my ambition at the time. But while I'd love to write that the takeover improved public-housing residents' quality of life, a fair reading of history suggests that's a stretch.
