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White Shines A Light On More Allegations of Misconduct at DCHA

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One thing is certain: At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds never held a press conference quite like the one At-Large Councilmember Robert White called Thursday as the new chair of the Council’s housing committee. Whether or not that press conference will actually achieve anything is another matter entirely.

White called the media event an “emergency” when selling it to reporters ahead of time, but he devoted most of his brief remarks to going over things that have already been made public. Specifically, he highlighted a series of D.C. Housing Authority audits detailing allegations of contract steering, poor management practices, and outright corruption within the troubled agency, releasing them to the public and noting that many are now subject of further investigations. He also said that he personally received accusations of “serious criminal behavior” from a whistleblower last week and forwarded that information to “law enforcement,” but he wouldn’t go into further detail.

White also accused DCHA leadership of intransigence and instilling a culture that “failed to prioritize and elevate serious issues, but instead [tried] to quash them quietly.” That bit of this morning’s meeting on the steps of the Wilson Building was particularly awkward, considering that DCHA Director Brenda Donald had caught wind of the press conference and stopped by to watch the proceedings unfold alongside some of her deputies and members of the authority’s new governing board.

“I’m not going to wait for more scandals or criminal activity to emerge in dribs and drabs while we use up resources triaging each one,” said White, who took over the housing committee from Bonds at the start of this year. “I’m not prepared to chase my tail when I see patterns of wrongdoing that require us to be proactive and to get to the bottom of the issues making our public housing agency less effective than we need it to be.”

The problem is that all of the things White proposed to do about these issues sure look like he’ll be merely pursuing his posterior, despite his assertions otherwise.



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