Housing Authority plans split from City Hall

Lakewood Housing Authority's new headquarters at 575 Union Blvd.

By Charley Able

Lakewood Edge

LAKEWOOD – The city’s Housing Authority plans to pack its bags, move out, change its name and all but divorce City Hall.

Instead of the LHA and City Hall being joined at the hip, it will be “maybe more like joined at the little toe,” said Tami Fischer. Fischer fills dual roles as LHA’s executive director and the city’s director of Housing and Family Services.

But that, too, will end soon.

In mid-April, after 14 years as a city employee, Fischer will become executive director of Metro West Housing Solutions, the LHA’s new face “of affordable housing” when the agency separates from City Hall, Fischer said.

“That’s what we hope to be in the community, attractive affordable housing developers,” Fischer said.

The social services duties of what now is the Housing and Family Services Department and its staff will be controlled by the city’s Community Resources Department and its director, Kathy Hodgson.

The housing agency will have its own staff with benefits and pensions administered by Metro West Housing.

Fischer did not respond to inquiries about the LHA annual budget and the value if its properties.

The administrative decision enabling the LHA changes already has been made and City Council will hear about the changes at an April 6 study session, Fischer said.

The agency’s new headquarters will be in its recently acquired 36,124 square-foot office building at 575 Union Boulevard,

LHA bought the building for $3.1 million last summer and plans an extensive makeover, including an estimated $900,000 to repair the building’s roof.

The agency’s deal for the building is a hot topic, recently brought into question by the Rocky Mountain News. The arrangement even raised the eyebrows of LHA’s appraiser.

The Housing Authority bought the property from Formations LLC just moments after Formations closed on its deal with the property’s owner, Stuart Gilbert Realty. The quick flip netted Formations a $310,000 profit on a $2.8 million investment in less than 30 minutes.

The appraiser, Valuescape, noted some concern over the three-party deal.

“The subject (property) is being flipped on the same day as the closing date for the sale. … There is some speculation that the transfer from Stuart Gilbert to Formations LLC may not be an arm’s-length transfer,” Valuescape’s report states.

The appraiser, which pegs the value of the building at $3.2 million, was not able to determine how much Formations LLC paid Gilbert in that transaction, or how much Gilbert paid for the building in 1997.

Jefferson County property records show Formations paid $2.8 million for the property and Gilbert paid $2.47 million for the building 11 years earlier.

The quick-flip transaction is just the latest in a number of questionable real-estate deals the LHA completed in the past few years.

In 2006, the agency paid $1.1 million for a property that had been acquired a week earlier for $850,000.

Earlier that year, the Rocky Mountain News uncovered a transaction in which the agency eventually paid $500,000 for a property they previously had under contract for $370,000.

The first contract for the 1.8-acre property at 1571 Kipling was cancelled by Bill Lunsford, LHA’s housing development manager, because the original owner complained the property was worth more than the agreed-upon price.

 That contract was cancelled, but Lunsford came back to the LHA’s Board of Directors less than two years later with another contract on the same property, for $130,000 more.

In 2002 the housing agency came under fire for making a $10,000 campaign contribution to help sell a sales and use tax increase to the citizens. It later admitted it acted improperly in order to avoid being found in violation of Colorado’s Fair Campaign Practices Act.

The admission came during a hearing at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.