Inquirer Editorial: PHA's legal costs detract from its mission

The Philadelphia Housing Authority says it will repay $150,000 worth of questionable legal expenses it billed to the federal government.

That's good news for the federal treasury, but it's not much comfort to the impoverished Philadelphians the housing agency is supposed to help.

To get square with the feds, the $150,000, along with another $69,435 of questionable billings for legal work, will be repaid from "other funds" at PHA.

Those "other funds" are not going to come from the pockets of those responsible, such as ousted PHA director Carl Greene. Those "other funds" are money that won't be used to provide badly needed housing.

PHA has 100,000 individuals and families on its waiting lists who are in need of affordable housing. There's a shortage of 77,000 rental units in the city for the lowest-income Philadelphians, those with less than half the area's median income, according to an April analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

The housing agency could have done a lot of good with the money it has squandered on lawyers.

PHA spent so much on lawyers - $38.5 million in the past three years - in part because it hired private firms, rather than using its own lawyers on staff. By some estimates, PHA probably paid three times as much for outside legal help than it would have paid for work done in house.

Outsourcing its pricey legal work was also a convenient way for PHA under Carl Greene to reward politically influential players on the Philadelphia scene.

Greene is gone, and the new management installed by the federal government appears to be working well to reestablish public trust and confidence. Getting right with the feds on past legal billing abuses is just one step in that long and painful process.