The announcement comes after city officials met with a representative from HUD last Friday.
“I had an opportunity to participate in discussions with HUD last Friday and at times those discussions got quite passionate. It’s clear that the problems in the program in which were being asked about are clearly with the housing authority,” said Cassandra Harris, of the city’s new housing authority, who spoke on behalf of Mayor R. Rex Parris.
Tuesday’s council action follows the settlement by the LA County Board of Supervisors that prevents county housing inspectors from working with the Antelope Valley cities and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to do Section 8 compliance checks,
The NAACP and a local group known as TCAL, sued the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale to stop the inspections, which uncovered fraud and criminal activity by some Section 8 recipients living in Antelope Valley. Without being named in the lawsuit, four county supervisors voted to stop the inspections and funding of the program to uncover fraud.
At that time, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said he was outraged at the settlement, especially since the county was not named in the lawsuit. He also said the supervisors’ actions would send the wrong message – telling people that committing housing fraud is acceptable.
“This proposed settlement is not warranted based on the facts of the case and lets criminals know that they can act with impunity,” Parris said last week.
However, Palmdale Mayor James Ledford, Jr., following the county supervisors example, capitulated and settled, leaving Lancaster to stand alone against what Lancaster officials describe as merit-less accusations.
“The charges being made against the city of Lancaster should have been made against the LA County Housing Authority,” Harris said
“If, in fact, they had any validity at all,” Harris added.
With LA County in the settlement now, Harris said that Lancaster must hold them accountable for the program administration and the way to do that is by asking HUD to investigate what the city believes are deficiencies in the program.
On a positive note, Harris said that when HUD met with the city Friday, there was a lot of very good dialog between the two groups.
