CHA Board Meeting

Mayor Ron Littlefield has called the Chattanooga Housing Authority “an embarrassment” to the city and said its conduct “continues to defy common sense.”

The mayor expressed those feelings in an Oct. 15 letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The unprofessional conduct of the housing authority continues to defy common sense and has become an embarrassment to our city,” he wrote in the letter addressing the expansion at Fairmount Avenue Apartments.

The letter was written after Mr. Littlefield met with CHA officials about the authority’s plans to double the number of public housing units at Fairmount Avenue Apartments. He opposes the move and took those feelings to a CHA board meeting on Monday.

“You do not do any one, including the residents, any good by isolating and concentrating people,” he told the board.

CHA Board Chairman Eddie Holmes said the mayor’s letter to HUD was too personal in its criticism.

Several CHA board members also said the mayor should have expressed his opposition to them before writing a letter to HUD.

HUD officials in Knoxville, where the department’s state headquarters is located, could not be reached for comment.

The mayor said the housing authority’s decisions to increase the units at Fairmount Avenue Apartments and its lack of communication of the plans are the latest of CHA actions that motivated him to say the organization has “unprofessional conduct.”

He said housing officials misused HUD funds for the Mayfair on Market project, which cost the housing authority about $3.5 million. He also noted the authority’s decision to spend more than $3 million to renovate its central office building on Holtzclaw Avenue, despite his advice against it.

CHA closed down a portion of the building this year to save money on running it, and Mr. Littlefield described the building as a “financial albatross.”

For the Fairmount Avenue Apartments project, HUD has given the CHA $4.8 million in stimulus money to increase the number of units from 28 to 48. The money also will help make the units more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, CHA officials said.

Mr. Littlefield said the design for the housing was “cold,” lacking green space and other ways to connect it to the community.

City Councilwoman Deborah Scott, who represents the district where the apartments are located, said Fairmount Avenue is too narrow to handle the extra traffic from doubling the apartments’ density, a concern echoed by residents on Fairmount Avenue.

“You’re asking for a huge problem,” Bryan Hamilton, who lives on Fairmount, told board members Monday.

The mayor also criticized the housing authority for not adequately notifying residents on Fairmount Avenue about plans to renovate the apartments.

“Right now, the housing authority is operating under the radar,” Mr. Littlefield said.

CHA’s vice president of development, Naveed Minhas, said the authority asked for public input in 2004 during a Land Use Plan meeting. According to the plan, the apartment site can hold about 60 units, but the authority chose to have 48, he said.