EOB threatens to evict families

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Monday, July 26, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

The Economic Opportunity Board threatened to kick two families with children out of a federally funded program to help the homeless this week, even as the federal funding agency informed the board in a letter -- for the second time in recent months -- it was mismanaging the program.

The letter says HUD officials will meet with the EOB Thursday to see if the nonprofit organization can prove that problems found by the federal agency in an April review have been solved.

If there is nothing to disprove the review's findings, the nonprofit organization will have to pay back some or all of the nearly half-million public dollars it received for housing the homeless.

The EOB did not return Friday calls seeking comment.

Larry Bush, HUD spokesman, said Friday his agency had to "set (the EOB) straight" after the nonprofit organization attempted to evict the two families from the program last week, apparently because of a lack of paperwork that HUD's review of the program had uncovered back in April.

Oyanna Small, a single mother of three, and Reginald Minor and Jennifer Stokes, who have two children, were nearly made homeless, they said, when the EOB told them they appeared to be unqualified to participate in the program.

However, Bush said,"our findings (about the program) were not an invitation to evict."

Both families lived with relatives last year and enrolled in the program after the landlords in both houses said the leases only covered their in-laws, and they would have to leave. HUD told the EOB letters from those landlords would be sufficient for them to remain in the program. Minor said this morning that he would be seeking a letter from his mother's landlord this week.

He said that EOB officials had "advised (residents) not to talk to the press" last week. "But I'm a grown man," he said.

Meanwhile, the EOB still has findings it hadn't cleared up with HUD that Kenneth LoBene, state coordinator for HUD called "serious" in early June.

The EOB responded to those findings in a June 16 letter, but last week, HUD's letter countered that the nonprofit organization still had not proved it had used the federal funds as it should have during 2002 and 2003, or that it had helped the people it was supposed to help.

The letter says the EOB "did not provide documentation to support its claim of assisting homeless individuals/families ... during calendar years 2002 and 2003."

As well, it refers to the lack of documentation about rent charged to the people in the program.

The EOB, in its June 16 response, said it had overcharged 32 people a total of $14,403 during the two-year period.

The board laid out a plan to find those people and pay them back.

It remains unclear how many of those people are current tenants, and if Small and Minor were among those who the EOB now owes money.

The EOB -- the Las Vegas Valley's largest nonprofit organization -- has been the subject of three federal reviews in recent months, including the HUD review, and is now being run by a temporary team brought in with public funds.

As of Friday, in any case, the families of both Small and Minor seem to have a reprieve and will not be joining the ranks of the Las Vegas Valley's homeless any time soon.

"Even if a person doesn't meet eligibility requirements and for some reason is not eligible to continue to live there, we expect EOB to work with that person to find them some other housing," Bush said.

"We're not interested in putting anyone on the street."