(already subscribe? log in).

3 bed, 1 bath, $25 per month

EDITORIAL | chelsea housing scam | editorial

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 10, 2012

IT’S NOT an intrinsically bad idea for public housing managers to live in the properties they run, if having these employees nearby improves communication with tenants. But state and federal housing authorities need to make sure such arrangements are really providing value, and aren’t simply a perk doled out to favored employees.

The issue has emerged as one of the many troubling practices at the Chelsea Housing Authority, which was placed under state receivership last year following reports that former director Michael E. McLaughlin was being paid a whopping $360,000 a year. Meanwhile, it turns out, three of his managers were living in public housing units, paying $25 a month in rent, even as more than 1,000 poor applicants sat on the authority’s wait list.

One of the managers lived in a state-subsidized unit, the other two in federally funded apartments. No other managers live in state-subsidized units in Massachusetts, but Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has identified other questionable cases in Pennsylvania.

Allowing a manager to live in a unit takes a home away from a needy family. In Chelsea, one of the managers has already told the authority she plans to leave at the end of the month, and the receiver is days away from announcing whether she will boot the other two. She should, absent evidence that the managers were putting in lots of uncompensated time and energy in exchange for their deeply discounted accommodations. And in the future, authorities must lay down standards for when an authority employee should get a unit for next to nothing - and for what’s expected of them in return.