The Española Public Housing Authority’s Section 8 Program is slowly starting to make headway on correcting some of its long-standing problems, which include illegally-placed tenants, allegations of fraud and missing records.
At Las Lomas Apartment Homes, which houses the largest number of the Authority’s Section 8 tenants, at least eight tenants were placed in apartments for which they did not qualify, according to city documents. The discrepancy between what tenants qualified for and the size of apartment they were living in caused the Authority to pay Las Lomas Apartments an additional $82 per month per tenant, documents state.
Section 8 Program Coordinator Andrea Dominguez, who took over the program in June, adjusted the amount of rent paid to Las Lomas in July to reflect what the Section 8 tenants actually qualify for. The Section 8 program provides rental and utility assistance to low-income individuals.
One clear example of how Las Lomas benefited at the expense of the Authority was in the case of Genette Salazar-Herrera, city documents state.
In January 2007, Salazar-Herrera was living in a two-bedroom apartment, documents state. She paid $17 of the $550 rent, the rest of which was picked up by the Authority. Eight months later, Salazar-Herrera was still living in a two-bedroom at Las Lomas but her rent increased to $632, the amount normally charged for a three-bedroom. The Authority picked up the increased tab.
The apartment complex, which sits across from El Paragua Restaurant along State Road 76, had been managed by Joan Wells but was taken over by the Authority’s former Section 8 coordinator Susan Mondragon de Quintana in July 2008. Quintana was the Section 8 director during Salazar-Herrera’s change in rents and did not resign until October 2007.
Dominguez said several other tenants should not have been placed in three-bedroom apartments because of their children’s ages.
“Any child under 5 is supposed to share a room unless there is a boy and a girl, and then you can separate them,” Dominguez said.
In other cases the apartment size listed on invoices from Las Lomas did not match what the apartment complex was charging the Authority. Margaret Aguilar, a Las Lomas tenant, is listed as living in a three-bedroom apartment on the Authority’s payment documents, which list the higher rent amount. But according to the invoice submitted by Las Lomas, Aguilar inhabits a two-bedroom unit.
In July, Dominguez corrected the Authority’s rent payments for each of the eight tenants. That correction comes amid a developing feud between Quintana and the Authority, in which Quintana accused Authority employees of telling Las Lomas tenants that the housing program would no longer pay for them to live there.
“It has come to my attention that residents are currently being derailed in recertifying there (sic) Section 8 vouchers should they decide to remain residents at the Las Lomas Apartment Homes,” Quintana stated in a letter to the Authority.
Authority Low-Rent Coordinator Eluvina Vigil, who until Monday was serving as acting director, denied Quintana’s claims and said Las Lomas tenants had been asking the Authority to pay for security deposits so they could move out.
“Tenants have been requesting the Housing Authority pay security deposits to allow tenants to move elsewhere, due to the crime and drug abuse in that area,” Vigil stated in a letter. “At that point, the Housing Authority has informed tenants that they are welcome to seek housing elsewhere at their own expense for deposits.”
Vigil also criticized Quintana for bringing her claims to federal Housing Department Program Revitalization Specialist Mandy Griego.
“I understand that in your prior employment with the (Authority) you had a very good relationship with (Griego), and through your gift of gab could have her ultimately believe any of your requests or accusations,” Vigil wrote.
At a Housing Board meeting July 30, Vigil submitted memos detailing two more incidents between Authority staff and Quintana.
In one incident, Vigil said Quintana told one of the Authority’s Section 8 tenants that Vigil was in the process of filing sexual harassment claims. In the other incident, Quintana again accused Authority staff of telling Las Lomas tenants they would no longer be able to renew their vouchers with the apartment complex.
Alleged Fraud
Aside from problems with rent payments to Las Lomas, the Section 8 program has come under scrutiny in past years for other incorrect payments, including rent and utility reimbursements.
Specifically, rent payments made by former Section 8 Coordinator Maria Tarazon, who replaced Quintana after she resigned in the Fall of 2007, have come under question and are still being investigated by the Española Police Department.
Prior to Tarazon’s resignation April 7, former Authority executive director Cy Martinez suggested she be terminated because he suspected her of committing fraud within the program through rent payments.
“In reviewing the Section 8 vouchers, I have found that fraud has been taking place,” Martinez stated in an April 4 memo to former city manager Gus Cordova. “I found where a landlord was paid for two months without a voucher being issued to the tenant, no signed contract by the landlord and no inspection of the unit had been done. I had instructed (Tarazon) that all vouchers issued and renewed must have my approval. This was not done.
“The landlord’s name was Mel Martinez, who was paid $557 for March 2008 and $557 for April 2008,” Cy Martinez wrote in the memo. “Joseph Winder (the tenant) was not on the waiting list and no voucher was ever issued. There was no inspection of the unit and the landlord never signed a contract. This is suspicion for fraud.”
Eluvina Vigil said Tarazon told her a contract had been sent to Mel Martinez, but at an address he rarely checks. During that time, the Authority was also trying to reassemble its waiting list which had not been in place for several months.
Mel Martinez declined to comment on the matter.
“That was just an error that they made,” Martinez said. “I’m not gonna go into that ‘cause it’s been worked out.”
City Financial Specialist Trudy Gallegos, who processes all of the city’s checks, found several problems with the Section 8 payments in March.
“After reviewing the (Housing Assistance Payment) report provided by (Tarazon) this morning, to the invoice payment selection report, there are a few discrepancies that were found by (Gallegos) that we need to look into further,” city Finance Department Director Josie Lujan stated in an email to the city’s former chief financial officer Elias Martinez. “When (Tarazon) entered the invoices, one amount was overstated by almost $8,000. A few others were entered as zero amounts although the (Housing Assistance Payment) reports listed different amounts.”
The mistakes were corrected, and Elias Martinez implemented a policy wherein the Finance Department would mail all Authority checks.
Many tenants in the Section 8 program were receiving utility reimbursements of over $200 per month in 2007. At the time, Vigil said tenants should have only been receiving payments for 40 percent of their monthly utility bills, but were instead receiving checks for 100 percent of their bills.
Several of the same tenants who were placed in Las Lomas apartments they did not qualify for were also receiving higher utility reimbursements. In October 2007, the Authority paid two tenants $224 for utility bills and two other tenants received $210 for their utility bills, documents state.
Missing Records
Despite all of the questions surrounding the Section 8 Program, reviewing its payments and documents is not an easy task.
Cy Martinez sent many of the Authority’s vouchers and checks to the Authority’s fee accountant, who works in Wisconsin. The accounting firm, Housing Accounting Systems Specialists, signed a contract with the city in July to work on the Authority’s financial reports.
“(They) took a box of original copies of vouchers, mainly checks, after he visited the Authority,” Martinez said. “Once he closes out the fiscal year, he should be sending those back. All (Vigil) has to do is give him a call.”
Vigil said she has been unable to reach System Specialists and is unsure of the status of his work.
In addition to the missing vouchers and checks, numerous reports from the Section 8 Program were deleted from Tarazon’s computer following her resignation.
Martinez said when Tarazon returned to the Authority to retrieve her personal affects, she deleted a large portion of the files on her computer.
“The next day, Tuesday, we called Ortiz Integration Systems to come and break the password so we could get into the computer and look at the Section 8 files,” Martinez said in an April 11 memo to former city manager Gus Cordova. “The Ortiz’s were not able to come until Wednesday and that’s when we found out that she had wiped out and deleted all the files from the computer. Even the drives were erased.”
Tarazon’s computer was confiscated by the Española Police Department as part of an investigation of the alleged fraud in the Section 8 Program.
Problems Persist
The multitude of problems in the Section 8 program is not a new phenomenon at the Authority. The Section 8 Program has been the focus of much criticism and investigation over the past decades.
In the city’s 2006 and 2007 fiscal year audits, the Authority was cited 21 times. In both audits, the Section 8 Program was the main focus of the citations.
In the 2006 audit, 92 out of a sample 150 Program files were missing documents.