Listen 10 min
Share
Comment on this story Comment
Keith Pettigrew, the CEO of Alexandria’s housing authority, has been appointed executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority as it seeks to correct years of mismanagement and move past a grueling federal review.
Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning. ArrowRight
The DCHA’s Stabilization and Reform Board of Commissioners unanimously approved Pettigrew’s appointment Wednesday, citing his D.C. roots and describing him as a “veteran public housing administrator.”
On Nov. 1, Pettigrew will take over the very agency that, although by a different name, shaped his upbringing: He grew up in D.C. public housing.
The Washington native inherits an agency under enhanced local and federal scrutiny — accused by federal authorities of allowing its public housing stock to fall into unacceptable disrepair. Most pressingly, Pettigrew will be tasked with overseeing the agency’s enduring responses to dozens of urgent directives issued last year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Advertisement
“Returning to lead DCHA, the housing authority in which I grew up, is both the culmination of my professional career and a very personal milestone,” Pettigrew said in a statement. He said he hoped to make the agency a “model for public housing” and aimed to serve as an “example for DCHA residents that through hard work you can achieve your goals.”
The selection of Pettigrew, a reform-minded executive who once helped stabilize the DCHA after a judge ordered a takeover of the agency, is the most consequential decision the authority’s new governing board is likely to make. The stakes are high: Among the city’s largest landlords, the authority serves about 30,000 households through housing vouchers, traditional public housing properties, and mixed-finance developments that combine public and private funds, playing a crucial role in meeting the city’s growing need for affordable housing.
Pettigrew will be expected to compel tangible change at the DCHA after the agency began revising its policies over the past year in response to the HUD report. Pettigrew has a track record of transformation, according to former colleagues, though the DCHA is a significantly larger agency than Alexandria’s, and a slew of challenges confront the new director.
Advertisement
Pettigrew, who will earn a $325,000 salary, brings to the DCHA experience working to turn around troubled agencies. In the 1990s, a federal judge found that D.C.’s public housing authority was in such terrible shape that he stripped authority from the mayor and appointed a federal receiver to take over. The federal receiver, David I. Gilmore, later brought Pettigrew on board to assist in the turnaround, and Pettigrew went on to hold multiple senior-level positions at the agency in the early 2000s.
Gilmore said D.C. would be “very lucky” to have Pettigrew back and called him “one of the smartest guys that I remember ever working with.” He described Pettigrew as a gregarious supervisor who knew how to motivate employees but also to dole out discipline when necessary. He recalled Pettigrew’s leadership as a senior official in the human resources department, where Pettigrew helped identify and build up competent personnel at a time when the DCHA was starved for talent, Gilmore said.
Pettigrew joined Gilmore to help clean up other government messes. He served as Gilmore’s deputy general manager for operations at the Housing Authority of New Orleans during another federal receivership in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in 2009. And when D.C.’s school bus system was so unreliable that D.C. public school students sued, Gilmore was again appointed by a judge as a federal receiver, bringing Pettigrew on as the assistant director of personnel and deputy general manager to transform the schools’ transportation division.
The federal receivership of the D.C. Housing Authority was widely credited with stabilizing the housing agency, increasing its occupancy rates and repairing unlivable public housing conditions — some of the very problems the DCHA is grappling with today.
Advertisement
The DCHA had a period of progress after the receivership ended in 2000 and it fell under control of a board mostly appointed by the mayor. But it declined in the aftermath of the Great Recession because of a combination of mismanagement, dwindling federal funding for repairs and turnover in leadership. Pettigrew will be the third DCHA director in as many years. A report in December by then-D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) said the agency put the mayor’s development goals over its own mission, an assertion Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has disputed.
Brenda Donald, the DCHA’s former director, pledged as she took charge in 2021 to turn the agency around. She claimed progress during her watch but departed an agency still in disarray in July, months ahead of the end of her contract.
Her tenure was marked most notably by a damning report from HUD, delivered last September, that faulted the agency for failing to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing for its residents, in violation of federal requirements. Bowser expressed sadness and embarrassment over the HUD report and successfully pushed legislation to reconstitute the board, which now consists of her appointees and two city officials. The shake-up left Donald, in addition to several board members, in place.
Advertisement
Donald, after initially downplaying the HUD report’s findings, touted efforts to remedy them as her administration’s “most significant accomplishment” in her resignation letter in May. She added that she was “proud to say that we knocked it out of the park.”
In the aftermath of the HUD review, the DCHA’s efforts included hosting several large lease-up events for people on its bloated public housing waiting list, launching mass inspections of public housing properties, and reworking its policies for contracting. The agency also worked to clean up a voucher program that fell under scrutiny for millions in rent overpayment.
Share this article Share
But Donald left before the work was done, and HUD has yet to weigh in on all of the agency’s efforts. According to her resignation letter, she told board chairman Raymond Skinner of her plans to leave on April 12, two days after a contentious D.C. Council housing committee oversight meeting during which she refused to say who approved a $41,250 bonus she’d received in January during the transition between the old and new boards.
Advertisement
The board announced it would conduct a national search to replace Donald and hired the executive search firm Gans, Gans & Associates. The board appointed a consultant for the authority, Dorian Jenkins, to serve as interim director.
By late July, a board committee had interviewed six of about a dozen applicants recommended by the search firm and whittled the pool down to two finalists, Pettigrew and Jenkins. During Wednesday’s meeting, board member James Dickerson called it a “very hard decision” and said the two finalists were “neck and neck.”
“I still struggle with it a little bit, because you have done a great job,” Dickerson told Jenkins, adding, “You’d make a great director and could run this agency well.”
Dickerson said that in the end, Pettigrew’s D.C. roots gave him an edge. As a child, Pettigrew lived in the Barry Farm public housing complex in Southeast Washington and attended Eastern High School, according to Skinner. He went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and a law degree, all from George Washington University.
Advertisement
Pettigrew has been at the helm of the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority since 2017. Carter Flemming, a former commissioner on the ARHA board, said the board hired Pettigrew because he shared its vision of wanting to transform Alexandria’s outdated public housing stock, roughly 1,100 units.
“He said when he came that he was going to take a look at the staff from top to bottom, and that if you weren’t part of that vision you probably weren’t going to last very long at the housing authority, and that’s true,” Flemming said. “I don’t want to give the impression he went in and did a wholesale cleaning, but he did a lot of retraining of employees on customer service, treating residents with respect and working efficiently, and it made a huge difference.”
He didn’t tolerate poor performance, Flemming said. When buildings were not well maintained or staff were too slow to fill vacancies, he would say, “‘This is not acceptable, and I’m going to get to the bottom of why this is,’ and he did,” Flemming recalled.
Advertisement
Some former residents and one former employee said Pettigrew’s intensity could translate into a harsh approach that included scolding his employees in front of residents during meetings. Some residents said a focus on central office management and broader redevelopment strategy came at the expense of building relationships in public housing communities, leaving them feeling disconnected.
For Rashad Jackson, an IT manager who for several years rented a market-rate unit in an ARHA property down the street from the organization’s headquarters, the lack of presence mattered.
“I don’t expect you to come around once a week and say hi. But when there’s a crisis and you have people panicking and they don’t know where to turn to, say something,” Jackson said.
Pettigrew didn’t immediately respond to interview requests left with him or his staff.
Advertisement
By contrast, Cassandra Lewis, a voucher holder who sits on the ARHA resident council, said she found Pettigrew’s accessibility one of his strengths.
“He has done a lot for ARHA, even with cleaning house of the employees who were there,” Lewis said, noting that before Pettigrew’s arrival, residents did not trust ARHA staff. “He came in, did what he had to do.”
Her only complaint, she said, is that she felt the agency was more focused on public housing than on voucher holders. The agency has been intent on redeveloping all of its public housing properties under Pettigrew’s leadership. The vision involves converting public housing buildings into mixed-income developments, where market-rate renters live alongside voucher holders.
“Upon becoming CEO of ARHA over 4 years ago, I immediately began to implement the agency’s repositioning strategy to transform our entire public housing portfolio to housing choice vouchers,” Pettigrew wrote in a December 2021 newsletter.
That represents a significant shift away from traditional public housing, mirroring a national trend over the past decade. Converting public housing to mixed-income buildings has in some cases been controversial, causing anxiety among residents because of temporary displacement or changes in property management.
Flemming said the ARHA passed a resolution requiring that all public housing units be matched one-for-one in the redeveloped buildings so residents would be guaranteed replacement units. She pointed to the decrepit Ramsey Homes development near Old Town Alexandria, which was converted into a modern building, the Lineage, on Pettigrew’s watch. Several other major projects are in the pipeline.
“He really did transform the culture and everything at ARHA, I have to say,” Flemming said.
Share
Comments
More coverage of D.C.
HAND CURATED
As Commanders eye RFK, D.C. stadium’s neighbors hope team punts
October 1, 2023
As Commanders eye RFK, D.C. stadium’s neighbors hope team punts
October 1, 2023
Homicides are falling in many big cities. In D.C., they’re rising.
August 19, 2023
Homicides are falling in many big cities. In D.C., they’re rising.
August 19, 2023
Cheating allegations in D.C. Little League put high-powered parents at war
August 19, 2023
Cheating allegations in D.C. Little League put high-powered parents at war
August 19, 2023
View 3 more stories
Loading...
View more