Hud

Michael P. Kelly acknowledged Tuesday that he abruptly resigned last week as executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority after federal officials learned of his affair with a PHA manager. Kelly, 58, is the second PHA director in two years to be toppled by a sex scandal. His predecessor, Carl R. Greene, was terminated in 2010 after PHA's board learned of secret payments of more than $600,000 to three women to settle sexual harassment complaints. In an interview with The Inquirer on Tuesday, Kelly, a married father of three, called the matter "a lapse of judgment and a personal family failure.

The abrupt departure of Michael P. Kelly as head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the agency he took over in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal in 2010, came after federal housing officials determined that he was involved in "an improper relationship" with a female PHA manager, government officials said Tuesday. Karen Newton Cole, the chief of human resources at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, said HUD started the review after receiving a tip from a PHA employee in early spring.

In a sudden and unexplained move, Michael P. Kelly, the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, resigned Friday, stunning an agency still recovering from predecessor Carl R. Greene's troubled tenure. "It's for personal reasons," Kelly said after a Board of Commissioner meeting Friday morning. He added: "I can tell you there will be news very soon to explain this. " Kelly said that news would come within a week. The one-person PHA board, Karen Newton-Cole of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, accepted Kelly's resignation Friday, effective immediately.

In a sudden and unexplained move, Michael P. Kelly, the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, resigned Friday, stunning an agency still recovering from predecessor Carl R. Greene's troubled tenure. "It's for personal reasons," Kelly said after a Board of Commissioner meeting Friday morning. He added: "I can tell you there will be news very soon to explain this. " Kelly said that news would come within a week. The one-person PHA board, Karen Newton-Cole of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, accepted Kelly's resignation Friday, effective immediately.

The 1940 census was released by the National Archives in April, offering those interested the opportunity find out where Uncle Fritz and Aunt Bessie grew up. But experts have been privy for many years to information about housing in 1940, when ramped-up war production finally brought an end to the Great Depression. What was it like? Well, 18 percent of housing was in need of major repair. That meant that almost seven million of the 37.4 million dwellings in the United States were dilapidated.

  Edward F. Momorella, 67, of Hatboro, administrator of the Emergency Management and Planning Agency in Abington Township since retiring in 1999 as a federal regional inspector general, died Tuesday, April 3, of a heart attack at Abington Memorial Hospital. Mr. Momorella also had been the volunteer deputy emergency management coordinator for Upper Moreland Township since the mid-1980s. "He loved going out and helping people," his wife, Lorraine, said. He had been an assistant fire marshal in Upper Moreland since the early 1970s, and for a time in the 1970s was president of its fire company, then president of the Willow Grove Fire Company.

The Obama administration's effort to help three million distressed borrowers refinance into FHA-backed, lower-rate mortgages still faces one big hurdle: Congress. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, in Philadelphia on Friday for a summit on housing policy and related issues at the University of Pennsylvania, said without congressional action to expand the Federal Housing Administration to accommodate so many loans, "there's nothing we can do" for these borrowers.

It's been one year since federal housing officials seized control of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, but both they and Mayor Nutter agree the agency is not ready to revert to local control. Nutter is expected to sign an agreement this week to keep the agency in federal receivership for up to a year more, according to Sandra Henriquez, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Henriquez said in an interview that PHA's new executive director, Michael P. Kelly, had succeeded "in putting reforms in place to signal that this is a new day. " But, she said, the agency needs more time to complete its recovery in the aftermath of the ouster of executive director Carl R. Greene.

In an ongoing tug-of-war over legal bills, the Philadelphia Housing Authority is challenging the latest demand from the federal government to reimburse $726,400 in government funds for legal fees to one firm. PHA general counsel Barbara Adams said the housing authority "cannot at this time comply" with a government directive to return federal funds paid to Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis L.L.P. Adams made her remarks in a Jan. 31 letter to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regional counsel Sheryl L. Johnson.