LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. — The Lee's Summit Housing Authority (LSHA) is down to one full-time employee and tenants have lots of questions.
The only permanent staff member is a maintenance employee.
The three-person administrative staff was fired after an internal investigation.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Inspector General is investigating fraud potentially linked to the previous employees.
The last executive director resigned in October. The entire board of commissioners resigned a month later.
KSHB 41 has done stories on the dysfunction at the agency.
The struggles for tenants to get their concerns addressed during the agency's challenges are why Sandra Esry is trying to bring residents together.
"Instead of one or five people being brave enough to go up there and complain about the conditions here and lack of help there, I see a resident council," Esry said.
Esry has lived in Lee Haven, a public housing community overseen by the housing authority, for several years.
Tenants have complained about the lack of maintenance and poor conditions of the homes for years.
Esry has been researching how to form a Lee Haven resident council for a month.
The council is an official tenant-led organization that can be a bridge between residents and leadership at a housing authority.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has bylaws and a comprehensive process tenants must follow.
Esry thought it was long overdue for an effort like this.
"Nothing has changed for us. Maintenance is still putting out fires where it can, doing what it can. We're living in our homes falling down around us and scared to death to say anything," Esry said.
Esry started a Facebook page for the council she is trying to form and plans to go door-to-door to ask tenants for their support.
"When 50 people are expressing concerns, questions and ideas, it's hard to ignore that," Esry said. "That's not just old people complaining."
The agency's new interim director, Tina Bartlett, said she's fully supportive of a council.
She remains the executive director of the Independence Housing Authority (IHA) while temporarily working for LSHA.
Bartlett has seen residents organize in the same way.
"The residents live here, so they know what the issues are and what’s going right and wrong," she said. "It gives them the ability to meet with management and staff in an organized way. ‘Hey, we have concerns about this.’"
Bartlett has been the interim for LSHA for about a month. Her staff from IHA are helping her run the Lee's Summit agency.
They were shocked by the workload they inherited.
"It was definitely a lot more than we expected," Bartlett said. "We knew the agency had been in trouble."
At LSHA's board of commissioners meeting on Wednesday, tenants complained about their March rent payments not being processed.
A staff member from IHA, who recently started assisting Lee's Summit, said they will try to process the payments within two weeks. It's on a list of many tasks they are focusing on.
HUD's Office of Inspector General was also present at the meeting. They would not confirm or deny a fraud investigation with KSHB 41's Alyssa Jackson.
"As a matter of course, the HUD Office of Inspector General does not confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations. That’s not to say that there is or isn’t one in this instance but rather that, regardless, this is not the type of information that we provide."
Job positions for the fired LSHA employees have been posted.
"The biggest thing is to be patient – Rome wasn't built in a day kinda thing," Bartlett said.
As tenants in the housing authority hope for their issues and concerns to be fixed with new leadership, Esry believes change can start with them.
"Those people will carry the voice of 50 units," she said. "When they speak, they will speak for 50 voices, not three."
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KSHB 41 reporter Alyssa Jackson covers portions of Johnson County, including Overland Park, Prairie Village and Leawood. Share your story idea with Alyssa.
