LYNN — Building maintenance and tenant security could fall through the cracks, warned local public housing authority directors, if Gov. Deval Patrick pushes through a plan to consolidate 240 authorities into six regions.
“If you have problem agencies, the state should go in and correct problems, but just don’t go in and change the whole thing,” said Swampscott and Nahant Housing Authority Director Donna McDonald.
Patrick unveiled his plan Thursday, according to the State House News Service in a report that stated his plan could save as much as $10 million annually in administrative costs.
Patrick in a statement to the News Service said his proposal will “simplify and professionalize our public housing system.”
His plan requires legislative review and approval, including its proposal to shift ownership, management and spending oversight for 80,000 public housing units to new regional authorities.
Lynn Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development administers 3,800 state and federal units; runs a regional homeless assistance program and manages a 20-unit Saugus senior housing property. Director Charles Gaeta said he has not reviewed the governor’s plan but thinks housing authority operations could “use some fine tuning.”
“I do think there should be local control. We’re a pretty innovative group here. I think we get a bang for our buck,” Gaeta said Thursday.
Public housing tenants receive a variety of assistance based on government-set income guidelines and pay a percentage of their income in rent with tax-dollar assistance covering the rest.
McDonald oversees 128 public housing apartments in Swampscott and 48 in Nahant. She juggles a $750,000 annual budget for both authorities, but also tackles problems like squirrels infesting attics. She said regionalization “sounds good on paper” but wonders how Patrick’s proposal will translate into effective daily authority management.
“Is the maintenance person going to be out of Swampscott or Andover?” she asked.
Regionalization proponents claim they can make public housing operations more “efficient” and “streamlined,” according to the News Service, and claim consolidation will have little impact on tenants.
Sue Bonner isn’t so sure. The Nahant resident represented tenants on the 23-person commission that helped prepare proposals for merging authorities last spring. She has been a Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants member for 20 years and lived off and on in public housing throughout her life.
She called authority regionalization a “sweeping and extreme” idea that could result in needed money languishing in a new, upper-level bureaucracy instead of being spent on solving local housing problems. Bonner said reforms are better focused on ways authorities can make purchases or undertake other cost-saving ideas on a large scale.
While serving on the commission, she proposed introducing on a pilot basis any consolidation plan that survives legislative review.
“That balloon didn’t fly,” she said.
Gaeta said local oversight over public housing in Lynn allowed the Authority’s 60 employees to forge close ties with police to protect tenants.
“Our residents are our number-one priority; they always have been,” he said.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
