EOB housing program still mired in problems

Monday, July 12, 2004 | 10:52 a.m.

Jenny Stokes thought she, her fiancee, Reginald Minor, and their two daughters could finally get out of their one-bedroom apartment managed by the Economic Opportunity Board when that nonprofit organization told them in recent weeks they had overcharged the family $920 for rent during the past six months.

Stokes and Minor together earn about $1,300 a month.

She told her older daughter, "who gets all excited about these things," that they now would move to a two-bedroom apartment near her uncle and great-grandfather.

Then she got a letter from the EOB Thursday saying, "Unfortunately that amount was incorrect ... it's noted you have overpaid your rent by $96.00."

There's also tenant Oyanna Small, a single mother of three earning $7.25 an hour at a gas station, who was given three different numbers in two days for the rent she should be paying for her apartment in the housing project on Washington Avenue.

These and other irregularities -- including three evictions from the project -- all occurred after the Housing and Urban Development Department gave the program a stinging review in April and the EOB promised to fix the problems in June.

In addition, the person overseeing the program for the EOB, Brian Sagert, resigned the last week of June.

"I came into a bunch of stuff ... and my goal is to make the organization better," Keysa Rogers, the new deputy administrator for the organization's housing division, said on Friday.

The HUD review found a series of problems with the program, meant to house the chronically homeless, after giving the EOB a total of $473,000 between 2001 and 2003. The problems included no control over the rents the organization was charging tenants and no evidence the tenants were indeed chronically homeless before entering the program.

The EOB responded to the review June 16. HUD spokesman Larry Bush said Friday that HUD was still evaluating the EOB's response, which said that the organization had overcharged nearly $14,500 for rent during a two-year period, leaving 32 poor people hundreds of dollars poorer. HUD could decide in the coming days that the EOB also must pay back the federal government any amount of money that has not been managed as it should have been.

Rogers said Friday four of the five current tenants have been overcharged. The program has nine apartments, five on Washington Avenue and four on Adams Avenue.

Rogers said the EOB notified those tenants they could pick up their checks July 16.

But Stokes said she was told in a letter two weeks ago that she would get $920, only to get another one last week telling her the first letter was a mistake. Both letters were dated June 28.

"This has totally got us confused," Stokes said.

Rogers said the mix up in the overpayments was "a normal mistake."

"They were looking at the wrong person ... it was caught and it was corrected," Rogers said.

Similarly, Small said during a stretch of two days in mid-April she was told her rent would be set at $174, $374 and, finally, $311.

Then, June's rent was to be $103, for which she wrote a check, only to be told days later that the rent was really $62. She had to cancel the first check, and then found that the second wasn't deposited until the 28th, causing her to receive an eviction notice -- which she threw away.

Asked about this chain of events, Rogers said, "If we made a mistake, it's a good thing we caught it."

But Small said she doesn't feel as if the program is helping her pave the road to self-sufficiency she has been seeking since moving to the Las Vegas Valley from Ohio last August, and instead is anxious about the nonprofit organization's next move.

She also said she isn't sure if she has been overcharged for rent or not, and is waiting for a meeting with her caseworker this week to discuss the matter.

As for HUD's finding that there was no evidence the people enrolling in the program were chronically homeless, defined as someone who has been without a home for one year or for three times in two years, it was clear the two families on Washington Avenue, while poor, were not homeless.

Both had in common that the roofs over their heads before living in the EOB apartments belonged to in-laws.

Despite this common thread to their histories, Small was asked in a form she filled out when entering the program to explain her "onset of homelessness."

She wrote, "I had to move from my mom's house because I wasn't on the lease."

Apparently, at least a few of the people who have used the program in recent years were homeless, because one of the measures the EOB said it would take to locate the 32 people who they had overcharged rent was to contact area homeless shelters to find past tenants of the program.

Rogers said Friday that the EOB had begun the effort. But Charles Desiderio, spokesman for the Salvation Army, said he knew of no attempt by the EOB to contact his agency, and Frank Richo, director of residential services for Catholic Charities, said the same.

Bridget Claridy, of the Shade Tree shelter for women and children, said the EOB had contacted them about locating two women.

Rogers said that advertisements will be placed in local newspapers this week in the attempt to contact more of the people owed money. She said that only current tenants in the program had been located so far, leaving a total of 28 to contact.

Small has a meeting Wednesday with her second caseworker in seven months in the program, to clarify whether or not she is owed money.

Meanwhile, Small spoke Friday of hopes of someday finding a "high-end" position that paid at least $10 an hour, before she headed off to her job at the gas station near her mother's house in northwest Las Vegas.

"I don't want to be stuck in a program like this forever," she said.