After 17 years at the helm, Renee Glover is negotiating to end her tenure as chief executive of the Atlanta Housing Authority amid a rocky relationship with appointees of Mayor Kasim Reed who apparently want to exert more influence over the massive agency.
The AHA, organized under state law to acquire and operate affordable housing for low-income families, currently serves about 50,000 people, owns 11 high-rise buildings and two small family properties, and has an operating budget of roughly a quarter of a billion dollars.
During her stint at the housing authority, Glover has presided over the demolition of Atlanta's largest public housing projects -- including sites so notorious they were referenced in rap songs -- and the transition to mixed-income communities. The once-notorious Techwood area became a focus of development. Atlanta, which in the early 1990s had the country's highest percentage of residents living in public housing, got a nickname for reforms: the "Atlanta Model."
Since 1995, the housing authority has relocated more than 10,000 families from distressed housing projects, often using housing choice vouchers. It demolished all its large distressed family housing projects and five distressed high-rise buildings, which housed elderly and disabled people.
Glover, who worked as a corporate finance attorney in Atlanta and New York before joining the housing authority, won regional and national recognition. She joined the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Habitat for Humanity International. Her name was floated recently as a possible candidate to lead the Chicago Housing Authority.
She had a strong relationship with Shirley Franklin when she was mayor. But Glover did not have similar compatibility with Reed, who has the power to appoint a majority of the housing authority's governing board.
In a statement, Reed said, "Atlanta continues to face challenges around homelessness and affordable housing for working families."
"It is my goal to address these critical issues in an effective, fiscally prudent and compassionate manner during my term as mayor," he said. "I believe it is time to move in a new direction, and I will rely upon the expertise of the housing authority board to lead this process."
In recent months, Reed’s appointees challenged Glover's authority on a variety of fronts, including the agency's operating budget of more than $250 million. Daniel Halpern, chief executive of Atlanta-based Jackmont Hospitality and a veteran Democratic operative with strong ties to Reed, was one of Glover's strongest challengers.
This summer, a proposed communications budget of $750,000 attracted Halpern's particular ire. He succeeded in cutting that line item down to $84,000.
New board members appointed by Reed "have made it clear that they would like to have a change in leadership at AHA, which is fully within the prerogative of the mayor and the board," according to a statement emailed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on behalf of Glover. Glover and the board, the statement said, have been working on "mutually acceptable terms of separation and an orderly transition."
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