At the urging of its tenants, the Chelsea Housing Authority is seeking restitution against its disgraced former public housing chief, Michael McLaughlin, saying his criminal deceptions forced them to live in dismal conditions while he profited.
In a motion filed in federal court Friday, the agency, joined by the city’s tenants association, said it is entitled to almost $550,000 in restitution, a sum equal to the extra money McLaughlin received between 2007 and 2010 beyond his reported salary. McLaughlin faces sentencing June 14 for concealing his $360,000 salary from regulators, an amount that ranked among the highest of any public housing official in the country.
“The funds which McLaughlin lied about in order to continue to receive them were intended to benefit CHA [Chelsea Housing Authority] for the low-income residents it serves,” the motion stated.
During the years McLaughlin was boosting his salary, maintenance and repairs were “foregone due to financial constraints,” it stated.
Residents came up with the idea to file the motion, then approached housing officials. The tenants are not seeking individual damages in the case, said Jay Rose, a lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services who is representing the tenants association.
Rose said the effort to pursue restitution marked a rare legal alliance.
“I’m not aware of any other litigation in the country where a public housing authority and its residents are on the same side in litigation,” he said.
Kind of a sad statement about housing in this country -- never mind the homelessness scandal.
In handwritten letters submitted to the court, tenants described unsafe and unsanitary living conditions and said problems were rarely addressed. One said rats had been crawling into her apartment, and described a hallway that flooded when it rained.
“It’s been 14 years that housing hasn’t come to fix or inspect my apartment,” the tenant wrote. “I live in these conditions with my 5-year-old grandson.”
Beyond hiding his true salary, McLaughlin appears to have diverted millions in federal funds earmarked for construction projects and repairs at the developments. That left tenants living in apartments that had not been updated in decades....
We call 'em slums.
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Related:
Time for me to make mine.
"Federal cuts hitting housing subsidy program; Some state residents denied voucher aid; agencies struggle to limit the damage" by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, May 26, 2013
Thousands of the state’s poorest residents are losing or being denied federal housing subsidies as a result of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts, forcing many to choose between food, rent, medicine — or the streets....
You know, after typing about this s*** for years and years and years I've reached the point where if the banks, military, and Israel are happy with their tax loot take (they never seem to be, so let's give 'em more if need be) then all is well with the world.
Sequestration is the term for sweeping and deep federal spending cuts that were supposed to be so dire they would push lawmakers in Washington to reach a compromise on reducing the federal deficit.
Well, the military is going to be retroactively protected from cuts, but other than that....
It didn’t happen. The cuts went into effect in March, but only in recent weeks has the impact begun to be felt across a broad range of federal programs, including decades-old housing programs designed to help the nation’s most economically vulnerable.
Makes you think Obama's "bungling" was nothing of the sort.
In Massachusetts, and across the country, groups have protested the cutbacks. Earlier this month, Budget for All, a nonprofit coalition of labor, religious, and peace groups, protested outside Government Center, urging the public to contact US senators who are already planning next year’s federal budget, which begins in October. The group advocates for reducing Pentagon spending and a tax increase on the rich and corporations....
Yeah, good luck with that.
See: Sunday Globe Specials: Fiscal Cliff Fraud
That was the tax "increase?"
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