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Phila. public housing tenants question Greene's oversight

Serena Hunter leaned up against the back fence of her townhouse in the Wilson Park public housing complex and couldn't help but laugh a little at the predicament of Carl Greene, the embattled head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

Serena Hunter leaned up against the back fence of her townhouse in the Wilson Park public housing complex and couldn't help but laugh a little at the predicament of Carl Greene, the embattled head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

"That's probably why they're trying to claim I owe that rent, even though they know I paid them," said Hunter, a 31-year-old mother of seven. "I don't know what's going on over there."

Over the last 10 days, Greene has undergone a public-relations crisis after the disclosure that not only had his upscale Naval Square condo been foreclosed on and the IRS had filed a $52,000 lien against him for unpaid taxes, but he also was being accused of sexual harassment by a former PHA interior designer and planner.

Greene, who receives more than $300,000 a year, paid his back taxes in March and said he had paid his mortgage through October.

The former top public housing official in Detroit, he came to Philadelphia in 1998 and helped build new housing and revive neighborhoods but also created enemies with what many describe as a confrontational style.

Two weeks ago, many of the residents in the public-housing developments that Greene oversees couldn't have identified him.

But news of his financial and workplace difficulties has circulated through the courtyards and streets, and as residents sat outside in the humid afternoon heat Sunday, many wondered whether Greene's problems had affected his oversight over the housing complexes they call home.

Virginia Williams, a nurse's aide, said she had been waiting two weeks for maintenance staff to get to her broken garbage disposal and toilet. She has been using a bucket of water to flush.

Williams has lived alone in a four-bedroom townhouse since her children left home. Three years ago a transfer order for a smaller residence was put in, and Williams is still waiting.

"We've been having these problems for all these years, and now all this comes out about Carl Greene," she said. "They're harassing us about our lawns, and there he is not paying his mortgage."

Of course, complaints about public housing are as common as the gunshots that residents say echo through Richard Allen on a Saturday night.

And some residents had only positive things to say about PHA's management of its properties. Archie Richardson, a retiree living at Wilson Park, was impressed by the new pavilion installed outside his high-rise, where residents can sit in the shade to talk or play chess.

"It's nice. I like to sit out here and eat," he said.

But with Greene's troubles in the spotlight, the tenant leaders who have long opposed him are hoping to take advantage.

Virginia Wilks, tenant president of the Richard Allen and Gladys B. Jacobs complexes, joined nine other tenant leaders in filing suit against the Housing Authority in 1998 over Greene's hiring.

Wilks is a member of the Citywide Tenant Action Coalition, the smaller of two advocacy groups for PHA residents. The other is the pro-Greene Resident Advisory Board. Sunday, Wilks' phone rang again and again as PHA employees and residents called her for the latest news.

"It's been 12 years of hell since he's been here," Wilks said. "If Carl stays in, the outcry from the public is going to be huge."

Whether Wilks' assessment proves true remains to be seen.

Many residents expressed little concern Sunday over Greene's future after he returns from his self-imposed leave of absence from the PHA, during which he plans to go to a retreat for stress-related exhaustion.

Residents are more worried about when their ceilings are going to be fixed or more persistently about the crime that pervades many of their neighborhoods.

The new pavilion at Wilson Park, with its gleaming stonework and white awning, has become a contentious issue for some residents. Intended for the seniors, they say, it has become a hangout for drug dealers.