JHA CEO Dwayne Alexander won praise for his work as CEO while also facing questions from board members about whether he is the right person to lead the agency.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Embattled Jacksonville Housing Authority CEO Dwayne Alexander got a contract extension through the end of June and a $20,000 bonus from the board on Monday after the board decided against giving him a longer two-year extension.
Alexander won praise for his work as CEO while also facing questions from board members about whether he is the right person to lead the agency as it tries to expand its housing options in the fight against the affordable housing crisis.
“Do you feel there’s room left to move forward and improve the agency and where you’re at as CEO?” board Chairman Christopher Walker asked Alexander.
Alexander, seated at the other end of the board table, said housing authority is “just warming up” and he wants to continue driving its initiatives.
He said there is an affordable housing crisis and the housing authority is one of the few entities that is “digging their cleats into the ground” to work on getting more housing for low-income people who desperately need it.
“I think we waste too much time bickering back and forth when I deal with folks every day who come in this office that sleep in their car because they have nowhere to go and the only persons that care about it is this housing authority,” he said. “We don’t get a whole lot of money from anywhere and we take what we have and try to leverage it.”
He said Jacksonville is at the forefront of public housing agencies in Florida and nationally in taking action such as getting an A+ bond rating in order to issue bonds so it can expand its housing inventory.
He said in addition to working on a strategy for adding around 1,000 housing units that would have a mix of rental rates, the authority has renovated 600 of its own apartments.
Board member Heather Horovitz said she gives Alexander high ratings for how he runs the agency but the CEO position goes beyond those skills. She said the role of CEO requires relationship-building, navigating the organization’s strategy and fully providing accurate information to the board so it can have robust discussions about setting policy.
“My issue is all the other things we are looking at in the CEO but are falling short,” she said.
Alexander noted that the board has not followed through on giving him a set of goals and objectives it wants him to achieve.
The board’s vote on the contract extension through June 30 said it would create such goals and objectives.
The board did not take any votes on a pay raise for Alexander, who earns $250,000. The board will conduct a survey of other housing authorities to find out what their compensation is for their chief executives.
Alexander had been working without a contract because his previous multi-year deal expired in late September. When the board met in early November to discuss extending the contract and giving Alexander a raise, representatives of the mayor’s office told the board it would send the wrong message to award a raise while the city is grappling with the affordable housing crisis.
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The housing authority board still is awaiting the public release of a report by the city’s Office of Inspector General that examined almost $2 million in federal funds provided by the housing authority to public housing recipients for their utility allowances over a one-year period. The utility allowances are part of a nationwide program that helps recipients of public housing assistance have enough money in their household budgets to pay their utility bills.
Inspector General Matthew Lascell’s office has been examining how the Jacksonville Housing Authority manages the program for its residents. Lascell gave a draft report to the authority on Dec. 7 and the authority had 10 days to give its response before Lascell publicly releases the report with its findings and recommendations.
Alexander gave the housing authority’s responses on Monday. The inspector general will review those responses and then could release the report in the coming days, but there is no definitive timetable for that release.
The authority is one of the city’s largest providers of subsidized housing, particularly for low-income residents. The authority, which operates largely on federal funding, owns about 3,000 apartments at its own complexes and manages the federal section 8 program that gives about 8,300 housing vouchers for residents at privately-owned rental units.
The utility allowances go to a portion of those residents in amounts that are based on the resident’s income levels and the size of the rental units.
HUD regulations give roughly 3,100 housing authorities the option of either sending the utility allowances directly to the utility providers on behalf of residents or sending the payments to residents for them to then pay their utility bills.
“HUD provides flexibility for PHAs to choose the method of reimbursement,” Janice Rodriguez, direct of the Office of Public Housing at the Jacksonville Field Office of HUD, wrote in a Dec. 12 letter to the housing authority.
“HUD supports the use of checks or other alternative payment methods for making utility reimbursement payments to families,” Rodriguez wrote. “This includes the use of debit cards.”
Housing authorities that opt to provide the utility allowance on debit cards cannot put restrictions on the usage of those cards. The Jacksonville Housing Authority’s program does not prevent residents from using the debit cards for purposes other than paying utility bills.
The authority has been working since 2021 to enter into acquisition and development deals for adding more rental units to its offering. The authority recently closed on the $8 million purchase of the 102-unit Downtown East Apartments, formerly known as Franklin Arms, in the Eastside neighborhood near the sports complex.
The authority has been in talks with Atlanta-based Integral Group about buying and renovating the 256-unit Westwood Apartments at 1171 Lane Ave. S. on the Westside.
