New Indy public housing boss inherits challenges at troubled agency

INDIANAPOLIS — Yvonda Bean said she is used to tackling big challenges in public housing after coming to Indianapolis from the Columbia Housing Authority in South Carolina.

”It’s a big task, it’s a tall order, I know its going to be a heavy lift,” she said. “I want people to know and I want the residents to know. I want them to find comfort in the fact that they have someone who is experienced and has done this kind of work before and is committed to seeing it through.”

Bean is the new CEO of the Indianapolis Housing Agency. She has been on the job for just two weeks, and she inherits an agency deep in crisis.

State auditors have found fault with IHA’s financial controls. Dozens, if not hundreds, of the apartment units under the IHA umbrella and the management of its private partners are boarded up and uninhabitable.

Section 8 clients across the city are being served with eviction notices because the agency hasn’t paid its share of their rent to landlords. Since its police force was disbanded in December, there have been two murders, a SWAT stand-off suicide and Tuesday night’s arrest of a fleeing serious violent felon on IHA-related properties.

Vendors are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices. Its hacked computer system has been down since October of 2023 due to a pair of ransomware attacks. Staff have been laid off and demoted and there are no full-time managers at most properties.

IHA has millions of dollars in deferred maintenance due. Security cameras on its properties are either inoperable or unmonitored. Unarmed private security guards have replaced certified police officers who protected the properties and monitored the residents.

The woman who lived in the apartment where a wanted man killed himself last week can’t get back into her unsecured unit to retrieve her belongings because IHA hasn’t mopped up the blood staining her kitchen floor.

It is Bean’s job to fix decades of mismanagement and financial incompetence at IHA.

“Sure, I read things about IHA before I joined the organization and understood that the organization had some challenges,” Bean told FOX59/CBS4 in her first local interview since accepting the CEO position. “That happens to be my background. I’ve worked with troubled agencies before and agencies in HUD receivership to turn them around.”

It was almost a year ago that the Department of Housing and Urban Development took over IHA, dismissed its locally appointed Board of Commissioners and began unwinding the tangled web of special interests, private investors, development arms and failing management that led the agency into ruins.

Formerly, oversight of the agency rested with the mayor’s office.

”Public private partnerships has been a strategy applied in being able to address some of the things that need to be addressed,” said Bean about the HUD decision decades ago to sell ownership stakes of its properties to private companies so that they might invest the money to manage and maintain the sites in return for certain rental income. ”At my last agency for instance, we actually realized $100 million in new construction housing and that was through public-private partnerships and that’s something that I’m super proud of.”

IHA provides housing and housing assistance to more than 20,000 low-income Marion County residents who have watched their rental communities become increasingly unsafe and unlivable.

”They need to know that we’ll take care of it as soon as we can,” said Bean.

Scores of units are boarded up and empty across the IHA portfolio as thousands of applicants languish on agency waiting lists for housing assistance.

”I do know that we’re committed to jumping in and addressing whatever needs to be addressed and turning those units around so that we can continue to provide housing for those that need it,” said Bean.

In late January, IHA and its private management partner ended their failed relationship, which saw the front offices of many properties empty and irregularities in unit occupation and rentals, maintenance and staffing.

Since then, the agency has struggled to reassign its employees to complexes where staff are too afraid to visit without police or security support, according to multiple sources.

“IHA has assumed management responsibilities over those properties,” said Bean, “and we’re doing what we can to address what we can address during this time until we are able to find a new property management company.”

As we arrived at IHA headquarters at 1919 North Meridian Street this afternoon, we found the lobby packed with housing assistance clients clamoring for answers that have left them, and their landlords, frustrated for months.

”Walk-In Wednesday is our commitment to making certain that we are accessible to our residents. It’s why we are here. It’s for them,” said Bean. ”Walk-In Wednesdays gives them an opportunity to come in and meet someone to address whatever situation they might be having.”

Rudolph Holiman and his landlord have been having a situation since last year when the Section 8 client moved into his subsidized house on the northwest side.

”My caseworker processed my move in January and I moved in here in March of last year,” said Holiman. ”The last two months it’s been like pulling teeth to get answers to get them to communicate with each other.”

Holiman said the teeth pulling has been over the $3400 in back rent IHA owes to the owner of his house.

“My landlord has been threatening to evict me since they haven’t been paying.”

Holiman said his landlord told him that threat will become real on Thursday.

“What is the problem at IHA? Why can’t they solve your problem?” I asked.

“They keep saying the system is down,” said Holiman. ”I get that the system is down, but please help.”

Bean said the recovery of IHA’s computer system should solve some of those problems.

”We have been successful in actually identifying new computers so we’re deploying them this week, next week, we hope to have them all deployed by the end of next week so we will have all new systems and a new server and we’re also exploring new software that we’re hoping to get approved by the Board.”

The one-person IHA Board meets next week. A contractor who told me he is owed $346,000 intends to attend the meeting in person to press for payment.

The woman in the apartment where last week’s SWAT standoff occurred said she hopes IHA boards up her former unit so that no one walks off with her possessions even if the agency won’t clean up the blood on the floor.

Section 8 client Holiman said he hopes a promise from his caseworker to pay off his landlord will forestall this week’s pending eviction notice.

Each problem, with names, phone numbers and addresses, was presented to CEO Bean. She said she was unaware of the issues but would look into them.