LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. — The Lee's Summit Housing Authority created a corrective action plan after a review from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
KSHB 41 in-depth reporter Alyssa Jackson obtained the report in June, which cited 46 ways the agency needs to improve.
Lee's Summit has been dealing with staff turnover, investigations, and poor performance reviews, all of which Jackson has covered for the past year.
Interim staff running the housing authority share that they have a plan for how they're going to fix many of the lingering issues from previous administrations.
Since the beginning of the year, Independence Housing Authority staff have been on a temporary contract to operate the Lee's Summit agency.
The interim director, Tina Bartlett, is working for both.
"We unlocked the doors day one…that was my thing," Barlett said. "The place had been closed and locked, and no one could get in, and no one could get through."
Soon after taking over, the staff got an 18-page Compliance Monitoring Review Report from HUD.
A month prior, the agency received a Section 8 Management Assessment Program (SEMAP) evaluation from HUD, which rated its performance as "troubled."
"It's a good checklist of 'here's all the things you need to do,'" Barlett said. "I like checklists."
Barlett believes the reviews were fair.
In an effort to get the agency back on track, staff started going through every tenant file individually.
Notices were recently delivered to tenants about delinquent account balances and account credits from 2024.
The letter asked tenants to provide receipts with proof of payments, or interest would accrue.
"I think the letter may have missed its mark with how it was sent out," Barlett said. "We noticed there was a lot of a) credit balances...people we owed money to or people who owed us money."
The interim director said a software glitch led to issues with accurate reporting. However, 80% of accounts have been sorted out, and most tenants haven't owed anything.
Another aspect of the action plan is filling vacant housing units.
HUD cited the agency for having six units unoccupied for more than 180 days with no plans for occupancy.
Barlett said there were actually 15 when she arrived.
Staff recently did a move-in and said they have four more units ready to be leased.
"We’re funded based on occupied units, so we increase our funding. Two, we have a long waiting list, so there are people in the community waiting on housing and we have housing sitting there," Barlett said.
An open records request by KSHB 41's Alyssa Jackson also revealed many complaints about landlords not getting housing assistance payments on time.
A landlord shared his experience with the delays last year.
HUD cited the housing authority for not getting payments to property owners on time.
The agency acknowledged it was an error created by another system issue.
Barlett explained, "We have met with a lot of landlords since we’ve been there. One of the biggest was when someone transferred. They transferred to a new unit, but the way they were transferred in the system wasn’t picking up the transfer, so the housing assistance payments continued to go to the old landlords, and the new landlords weren’t receiving them. I’m hoping by now we’ve cleared those up."
Some landlords who reported missing payments are apparently receiving them now from the housing authority. At the same time, the agency is working to recover funds sent to old landlords in error.
According to the agency, they are cooperating.
Barlett couldn't confirm the total amount of funds they're recovering. However, she said some landlords could've been paid between $200 and $900 for several months.
The Independence staff is only five months in, and Barlett believes it could take at least another year to get the agency on track.
"We'll have a spreadsheet of each of the actions that we need to take and then as we get them accomplished and provide needed resources to HUD, documentation, we'll mark them off and say, 'yay, one more thing."
Barlett said that outside of the corrective action plan, they've been creating policies, engaging staff with "incarceration simulators" to provide real-world examples for training, and they're planning an educational landlord training for this year.
The agency also fulfilled a long-awaited request from tenants to set up an after-hours line for emergencies.
"This was our goal," Barlett said. "We don't want to see a housing authority fail. The tenants rely on it…the residents."
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KSHB 41 reporter Alyssa Jackson covers portions of Johnson County, including Overland Park, Prairie Village and Leawood. Share your story idea with Alyssa.
