HUD Scolds Local Agency for Lax Operations

ORLANDO-The US Department of Housing and Urban Development is giving the Sanford Housing Authority until Apr. 1 to answer its findings of lax management and unsatisfactory daily operations at a 480-unit public housing complex, 25 miles north of Downtown Orlando. If the local agency cannot refute the charges and raise its current low rating score with the government, HUD could dissolve the agency and manage the asset itself, its preliminary report of Mar. 16 hints.

John Niesz, HUD’s public housing director in Jacksonville, FL, the government’s regional office, declines to comment on the preliminary findings until HUD’s final report is made public. HUD’s findings, after a six-week probe by a five-member investigative team, follows the earlier announced resignation of commercial real estate developer Timothy Hutchins as executive director of the Sanford agency, effective Apr. 20. He has been with the housing authority since 1991, first as finance director and as executive director beginning in 1996.

HUD’s preliminary report found no criminal activity on the part of Hutchins or his agency colleagues, despite earlier perceptions and allegations that almost $1 million in Federal funds had been mismanaged by Hutchins personally over a three-year period. Hutchins and the agency denied the charges.