PHA had been adamant against settling with Greene, who had originally sought $4 million, reducing his demand to $1.9 million on the eve of the trial. The housing authority now is under the control of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has spent two years rebuilding and repairing the agency in the aftermath of Greene.
So what changed?
In a move that surprised some courtroom observers, PHA agreed at the last minute to Greene's request for a nonjury trial. Buckwalter heard five days of testimony and began pressing for a settlement.
"These settlement talks were not easy," said Kelvin Jeremiah, PHA's interim executive director. "The easy thing to do would have been just to continue litigation."
"We're trying to move forward and turn a page," he said in an interview.
The problem for PHA, as testimony showed, was Greene had an ironclad employment contract. It wasn't enough for the agency to show that commissioners had reason to fire him. It had to also show that his behavior caused "demonstrable, material injury and damage to PHA."
Street, in an investigative report for the board, said Greene intentionally kept commissioners in the dark about the settlement of four sexual-harassment complaints against him.
But Greene's contract necessitated that PHA prove that those settlements financially harmed the agency. If it couldn't, the agency would have to pay the remaining years on his contract.
And who gave Greene such an enviable deal?
Street and the four other commissioners.
As much as the new PHA wanted to hold firm against a settlement, it could not escape the dynamics of the old PHA that revolved around Greene and Street.
Little invervention
Street, who ran PHA as chairman from 2004 to 2011, followed a "don't ask, don't tell" approach with Greene. According to testimony, it was a relationship of mutual self-interest that suited both of them well.
As long as Greene delivered on his promise of building better public housing, Street and other commissioners looked the other way and rewarded him with money and job security.
Greene, meanwhile, was able to run his agency with little intervention or challenges.
Street testified that the board had drafted a new and better contract for Greene in July 2010. A month later, Greene went into hiding and checked into a psychiatric hospital after disclosures about personal money problems and sexual-harassment complaints.
Over the course of his nearly 13-year career at PHA, Greene was accused by six women of sexual harassment - four of whom eventually settled their complaints for more than $1 million.
For commissioners, there were plenty of red flags. Fred Pasour, PHA's former human resources manager, was asked if he felt Greene needed counseling on how to deal with women, given the multiple complaints of sexual harassment that came to Pasour's attention.
"I believe that Mr. Greene needed counseling in how he interacted with all PHA employees," Pasour testified.
But the warning signs went unheeded by Street and the other commissioners. Greene wasn't just a tough boss. He was abusive. "He would take off after employees in unmitigated railing," said Greene's attorney, Clifford Haines.
Haines asked Street if he knew that Greene had a reputation for being a "volatile, difficult, harsh employer."
"He had a reputation, but I didn't buy into what everyone said," Street testified. The PHA chairman said he took the complaints with "a grain of salt."
Even Buckwalter pressed the former mayor on the complaints about Greene's behavior.
"I didn't sit down with employees and let them tell me their long stories," Street said. "Carl Greene was an intense person. He cared about public housing and cared about the quality of life of residents. He did have a tendency to push them and many times they felt abused."
So why didn't anyone stop him? Why was there no intervention?
Because, as Greene himself testified, it was in everyone's interest not to dig too deep. He said his commissioners, who were unpaid volunteers, were "absentee."
"The only personnel matters we ever discussed was the approval and extension of my contract," Greene said.
Commissioners "were only interested in outcomes - the new projects I built, the funds that I raised," he said.
Each board member, he said, got something from PHA.
Nellie Reynolds was the octogenarian representative for residents, who also had a son and daughter working at PHA and got an agency car and driver.
Pat Eiding, the president of the local AFL-CIO office, focused on protecting union jobs.
Debra Brady, the wife of U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, the city's Democratic Party boss, worked for a court processor that did business for PHA.
City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell - "the one who called every day about something," Greene said - advocated for the homeless and her West Philadelphia constituents.
And Street, especially while he was mayor, benefited from Greene's development work. Street used PHA sites as campaign backdrops during his second run for office, Greene said. His son Sharif, a lawyer for the defunct Wolf Block law firm, also got work. Greene testified that Street pressured him to use Sharif for PHA work.
The trial presented the first time that Greene spoke about the days leading up to his termination. He said he "felt a sense of personal collapse" when news outlets reported Aug. 13, 2010, that his bank had foreclosed on his luxury townhouse.
New charges
But if he was mortified by that news, Greene had been concealing an even bigger problem for months.
A young PHA designer, Elizabeth Helm, had leveled new charges of sexual harassment against him. In a scathing, four-page letter dated April 21, 2010, her lawyer, John M. Elliott, outlined her allegations to her supervisor at PHA, with copies sent to Street, the other PHA commissioners, then-Gov. Ed Rendell, Mayor Nutter, and City Controller Alan Butkovitz.
PHA's lawyer, Steven Englemeyer, said all the commissioners would testify that they never got the letter.
However, one of the people who did was Pasour, the human-resources manager. He said at the trial that he immediately called Greene. He explained the contents of the letter. And he warned Greene that Street and others had been copied.
Pasour testified that with that, the line went dead.
Contact Jennifer Lin at 215-854-5659 or jlin@phillynews.com, or on Twitter @j_linq.
