I have been among the few who has looked at HUD funding as the root cause of the RHA problems instead of pillaring RHA Director Tim Jones and his staff or various City Council members. I have always agreed that the RHA needs to make improvements, and they have come a long way, but they are severely limited by their funding, which is controlled by HUD, and ultimately, by Congress.

But instead of following Bob Woodward’s advice to “follow the money,” both the press and most of my fellow City Council members have refused to actually follow the money. Mostly, they want to follow someone in Richmond and tell us how incompetent they are.

Nat Bates was quoted by the SF Chronicle, “We need new management, ’Bates said. ‘I want a vote of no confidence for Tim Jones. And Mrs. Kathleen Jones ought to go, too. You cut off the heads of those two snakes, and you're going to find a lot of the employees coming forward and telling you what's going on.’"

In order to try and shed some light on the funding issue, I posed several questions to HUD representative Ophelia Basgal. You can see for yourself that she refused to answer any of them. See HUD Letter from Ophelia Basgal.

1.   Her answer to my first question essentially is, “We provide funding to the RHA and what they do with it is their business.” She did not address whether or not the level of funding has been sufficient for the RHA to maintain and make necessary capital improvements to their housing stock. Even HUD admits this. In the FY 2014 budget “The Public Housing Capital Fund would receive only $1.5 billion, a $277 million cut below FY13 pre-sequestration funds and $500 million below the HUD request. In 2012, HUD estimated that public housing capital needs were in excess of $26 billion. “ (http://nlihc.org/article/house-advances-fy14-thud-bill). Why is her office letting Richmond dangle in the wind when at least some of our problems are due to underfunding for needed capital projects?
2.    She didn’t even answer No.2. She just said, “HUD staff … has been meeting with City staff…”
3.    Her answer is similar to No. 1. Our staff tells us that they lack funds to keep a maintenance staff on call and that due to funding cuts, they have had to cut their staff by more than half in ten years. I think HUD should have an opinion about that.
4.   She did not answer this one either. She discussed sanctions that could be initiated by HUD but not how RHA could simple be given over to HUD as an RHA decision.

I predict tomorrow night’s special City Council meeting will be the circus of all circuses, with six of seven City Council members running for office trying to score political points on the backs of others. It will get very ugly.