Housing authority faces criticism; report shows low morale, spending under scrutiny

After years of aggressive restructuring and budget cuts, employee morale is low at El Paso’s public housing agency, and a growing number of former employees are now speaking out, raising questions about the effort to reinvent public housing here.

The Housing Authority of the City of El Paso manages 6,000 public housing units in the city, employs 430 people and oversees a $91-million budget, providing government subsidized housing to nearly 6 percent of El Paso’s population.

An internal report from July, made public last week through an open records request filed by El Paso Inc., found that employees are worried about job security, struggling under an increasingly heavy workload and don’t “buy into” efforts to transform public housing.

As a former employee who is looking for a new job told El Paso Inc., “Their workload is overwhelming, and management keeps demanding more and more and more.” The employee asked not to be identified.

Employees reported that executives have a “top-down/ivory tower” decision-making approach, and communication between executives and employees is “increasingly tense.”

“It came out at a very difficult time,” housing authority CEO Gerald Cichon said of the report. “Were we shocked? No, we weren’t shocked, and we recognize we have work to do. This reinvention of housing is going to take everybody.”

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