DCHA Director Brenda Donald’s new deputy was beforehand fired from the New York City Housing Authority in 2015 for his position in promoting off tens of millions of {dollars} of latest, unused provides for “pennies on the greenback.”
A New York Daily News article from 2015 names Victor Martinez as certainly one of 4 NYCHA senior managers held accountable when a metropolis audit discovered “a variety of severe deficiencies in our enterprise practices that hamper our skill to supply well timed and high quality service to NYCHA’s residents.”
Martinez, together with two new senior VPs, Nona Eath and LaTweeta Smyers, began working for DCHA in mid December.
Donald says in an e mail that DCHA used a headhunting agency to search out Martinez, and she or he was conscious of the circumstances below which he left NYCHA when she employed him.
“It just isn’t uncommon for senior leaders to be terminated throughout Mayoral transitions and a number of sources confirmed that there have been no issues concerning mismanagement,” Donald says in an e mail. “With wonderful suggestions and additional perception into the scenario for New York, we felt comfy extending the provide to Mr. Martinez.”
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took workplace in January 2014, and Martinez was fired in April 2015.
Donald argues that “it usually takes just a few months for an administration to determine its staff, simply because it has taken me to make choices in regards to the DCHA staff.”
Donald took over DCHA on an interim basis last May. She acquired a two-year contract in August after the DCHA board opted to desert its outdoors search.
In New York, Martinez had been put in cost of the housing authority’s stock unit the yr earlier than he was fired. Donald says in an e mail that she discovered by means of the search and interview course of that issues with NYCHA’s stock controls, administration, and system enterprise processes existed when Martinez got here into the position.
“Unfortunately Mr. Martinez took the autumn for failed insurance policies and actions of his predecessors through the time of management modifications,” she says. “There have been by no means any issues concerning corruption or felony actions. All of this was disclosed to the manager search agency and was confirmed by their impartial and really detailed background checks.”
Martinez advised a DCHA board of commissioners’ committee that he has 26 years of expertise in housing authorities and nonprofits, according to the minutes of the Dec. 29, 2021 meeting.
Eath, one of many new senior VPs, advised the committee that she’s labored for housing authorities in Birmingham, Dallas, and most lately Tucson. Smyers mentioned she has 16 years of expertise with housing authorities, together with as a senior VP of operations at Elm City Communities in New Haven, Connecticut, and the director of the voucher program on the Housing Authority of Cook County, in keeping with the assembly minutes.
Martinez will oversee DCHA’s property administration, the Housing Choice Voucher program, the Continued Occupancy Division, and the Office of Capital Programs, Donald says. She declined to reveal the salaries of the three new senior members of her staff, besides to say they’re “according to different DCHA govt positions.”
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/544768/new-dcha-deputy-director-was-fired-from-nyc-housing-authority-in-2015/