“When I saw Jackie moving in there . . . that killed me,’’ said Dorrance, 46, who now lives in another city with her youngest child.
Matos’s takeover of the apartment - and the ability of her two adult children to obtain their own subsidized apartments - reflects what some residents say is a troubling pattern of unequal treatment.
A Globe examination of court and housing records and interviews with current and former tenants found cases in which insiders received benefits at the expense of the low-income residents the housing authority was supposed to serve.
Former housing director Michael E. McLaughlin, who resigned last month following news reports that he deliberately concealed his $360,000 pay package, liked to boast that he collected every penny of rent tenants owed, sending threatening letters for even small unpaid bills.
But he was generous to inner-circle people such as Matos, whose former husband, James McNichols, is the authority accountant now under investigation for allegedly shredding work documents and authorizing more than $200,000 in questionable payments to McLaughlin on the day McLaughlin resigned.
The Chelsea Housing Authority is the only public housing authority in the state known to give a housing manager an apartment and to charge almost no rent, according to federal and state housing officials. While low-income people are told they could wait up to two years for a subsidized apartment to become available, Matos and two other housing managers live in public housing units for just $300 per year under a program that authority officials say improves tenant safety.
“That’s wrong,’’ said Thomas Connelly, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. “If they are in there, they should be paying the same rent as any other resident should be paying.’’
