Fulton Housing Authority pushes reform, but lawsuits expose old wounds
More than a year after the Housing Authority of Fulton County imploded amid allegations of financial mismanagement and a leadership collapse, the agency that provides housing to more than a thousand low-income residents finds itself at another crossroads.
A new federal review is on the horizon, and the agency remains embroiled in unresolved lawsuits by former employees who say they were targeted for trying to expose problems.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is scheduled to visit Atlanta later this month to review the Fulton authority’s rent voucher program. Previous problems in the program have led federal regulators to classify the authority as troubled.
In a public meeting in August, the housing authority’s new executive director, Veridia Hinton, said she hopes the work she and her staff have put into setting things right will bring the agency back into HUD’s good graces.
Hinton, who is the authority’s fifth executive director since 2022, told the Housing Authority Board that when she was hired last fall the agency was more than two years behind on financial records, which had tanked its standing with HUD.
Most of the authority’s senior leadership and the entire board that oversees the agency were replaced last year.
Amid the chaos, the housing authority was thrust into a financial shortfall they’re still trying to recover from.
“When we arrived at the agency, there were no financial statements available for 2022, 2023 or 2024,” Hinton said. An accountant was hired by the board to create the necessary financial statements and bring them current.
The Fulton authority operates more than 1,500 units of affordable housing, 960 of which are tenants receiving housing choice vouchers through the Section 8 program, also known as the Housing Choice Voucher program.
HUD labeled the Fulton authority as troubled after the organization failed to submit its certification for the annual Section 8 Management Assessment Program in 2023, Hinton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2024, the authority scored a 37% out of 100% on the same Section 8 assessment, Hinton said. That low score left the agency in troubled status under HUD’s standard. HUD’s upcoming review is scheduled to include an on-site visit Sept. 24.
The assessment measures if a public housing authority’s Section 8 program is meeting its goals of providing reasonable housing subsidies and if it has the record-keeping system to back it up. It uses indicators like how much funding is being used, if rent is being paid to landlords on time and if voucher applications were selected from a wait list to determine the efficiency of a housing authority.
But the assessment is based on the work performed and the documentation gathered throughout the entire fiscal year — which Hinton and the housing board had not been a part of and had not yet caught up on by the submission deadline, she told the AJC.
“While these factors led to a lower score in 2024, we have since made substantial improvements to enhance our performance this year,” Hinton said.
Meanwhile, the agency has been the target of a series of lawsuits from former employees who say they were harassed and bullied by members of the previous board and then fired for bringing problems at the agency to light. Former Executive Director Patricia Tyus, who said she was wrongfully terminated, settled her lawsuit against the authority earlier this year for $250,000.
Lolita Grant was appointed as interim executive director after Tyus was fired in March 2022. Grant filed her own lawsuit against the agency this past April. It alleges she repeatedly encountered “retaliatory animus” during her two-year tenure.
The housing authority had come under federal scrutiny regarding potential financial irregularities, Grant said in her lawsuit. Officials with HUD had demanded documentation of approximately $1 million of grant revenue “for which the Authority could not account,” the lawsuit said.
When Grant raised concerns about various compliance and accounting issues, then-board Chairman Antavius Weems threatened to remove her from her position as executive director, her lawsuit alleges.
According to Grant’s lawsuit, she started trying to address shortcomings in the housing authority’s record-keeping.
“Weems challenged Grant’s efforts to put in place a new system to document Section 8 enrollees and questioned whether she was exaggerating the extent of the problem,” the lawsuit said, adding that Weems instructed Grant to delay telling the board about the issues she had found.
Weems did not respond to the AJC’s requests for comment.
In a separate lawsuit filed in March, the authority’s former deputy executive director, Sherrika Bellamy, alleges she was fired from her role after filing charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and alerting the housing authority’s board and HUD officials of conflicts of interests, misuse of funds and intimidation from Weems, who was the board chairman at the time.
“HAFC staff were in fear of their job security because of Chairman Weems’s conduct,” Bellamy’s lawsuit states.
Her lawsuit also alleges staff were forced by Weems to use the agency’s funds to pay the salaries of people who weren’t supposed to be on the housing authority’s payroll. Bellamy continued reporting the perceived unlawful conduct to HUD, but problems persisted, according to her lawsuit.
Bellamy said the reputation of the Fulton Housing Authority became so marred the organization struggled to attract qualified candidates to positions that would have helped correct some of the issues they were facing.
“People from other housing authorities wouldn’t apply,” she said in an interview with the AJC. “People that had the actual knowledge and the training that’s needed to operate it.”
Both Grant and Bellamy filed EEOC complaints in early 2024. Bellamy said within 24 hours of filing hers, she sent a comprehensive email detailing problems at the agency to HUD officials and to members of Fulton County’s Board of Commissioners, the governing body that appoints the housing board.
By the end of June 2024, both Grant and Bellamy had been fired from their jobs.
The public crisis within the agency disrupted service to Housing Choice Voucher holders. The housing authority failed for two months to send out Section 8 rent payments to landlords on time, putting 1,300 tenants at risk of eviction, the AJC previously reported. It faced sanctions and ran the risk of losing its funding from HUD altogether.
Fulton County commissioners in July of last year asked members of the housing board to resign amid the chaos. All but two did. Both of the holdouts were removed by Fulton commissioners, and a new board was appointed.
Felicia Moore, who now chairs the housing authority board, told the AJC the new leadership that was brought on over the past year has worked to get the organization back on the right path. A problem, she said, has been locating key records and documents needed to comply with federal guidelines.
“We’re having to find the files and identify them, because we weren’t there,” she said. “But we’re complying with everything that (HUD) has asked us for that we can put our hands on.”
Moore added that she’s optimistic about the direction the housing authority is moving in.
“The board is engaged,” she said. “None of us have been part of what previously happened, but we’re all committed to getting the agency in compliance and out of the troubled status.”
About the Author
Asia Simone Burns is a watchdog reporter for the AJC. Burns was formerly an intern in AJC’s newsroom and now writes about crime. She is a graduate of Samford University and has previously reported for NPR and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR member station.
