L.A.’s Housing Agency Helm Will Be Taken by N.Y. Official

Ending a yearlong search, Mayor Tom Bradley and housing officials Friday announced the selection of New York City’s chief operating officer of public housing to run Los Angeles’ 21 scattered and troubled housing projects.

Joseph Shuldiner, 45, who takes on the $135,000-a-year job as director of the Los Angeles Housing Authority in May, will leave a massive agency of 15,000 employees that provides housing to 600,000 poor tenants. The much smaller Los Angeles agency provides housing to 21,000 of the city’s poorest residents.

Bradley said the Housing Authority has “chosen the best person . . . in this country after an exhaustive nationwide search.”

Described by housing officials in both cities as a proponent of tenant management and the hiring of tenants as managers within the projects, Shuldiner said his first order of business will be a walk-through of the Los Angeles projects with tenant leaders.

“Tenants are not naive, and if they know you are out there trying, they give you more leeway than you perhaps deserve,” he said at a news conference, where he and his family were joined by Bradley and housing officials.

An attorney, Shuldiner has overseen daily operations of the New York agency since 1986. Previously, he ran a 1,200-person office that managed apartments which had been taken over by New York City after landlords failed to pay their taxes.

According to public housing experts, Shuldiner “only became available” because of the recent election in New York City of Mayor David N. Dinkins. In recent months, Dinkins passed over Shuldiner for a higher-ranking job and has been systematically replacing the top managers in city government, they said.

“L.A. is getting an outstanding opportunity because of those changes in New York,” said Bob McKay, of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities in Washington. “He’s a really premiere executive director in the country and one of the brightest, most competent persons in this business, who has been involved in a whole range of issues.”

Shuldiner, however, received mixed reviews from tenant leaders of New York City’s vocal and politically active public housing committees. Some said Shuldiner was a disappointment to them because he was unable or unwilling to influence the city’s public housing chairman and commissioners on behalf of tenants.

Violet Hamilton, chairwoman of the Tenant Advisory Council, which is funded by New York’s Housing Authority but elected by the tenants, said Shuldiner “probably did the best he could, but I did not get along with him.”

She complained that Shuldiner refused to pay for a breakfast proposed by tenant leaders to meet the candidates in the mayor’s race, and she faulted him for not helping her group get its budget approved by the housing commission last year.

James Fisher, a tenant leader at the Marlboro Houses development in Bensonhurst, said he had “great expectations when Shuldiner originally came in, but . . . I can’t really give him praise. I feel that things under his administration kind of fell backwards.”

But Shuldiner also had his supporters among tenant activists. Ann Sanchez, chairwoman of the Council of Tenant Patrol Supervisors, which assists the police in controlling crime in the projects, said: “Oh my God, that’s bad news that we are losing him. He is a great person, and when we meet with him he has been very good to work with.”

Sanchez, also president of her tenant group at Gravesend project on Coney Island, said efforts to discourage crime “thrived under him better than before . . . I am surprised anyone has anything to say against him.”

In Los Angeles, Shuldiner will oversee 8,500 public housing units that date from the 1950s and that require massive renovations. The previous two directors of the agency were both pressured from office amid charges of mismanagement, and the agency has been run by interim directors since early 1989.

The last director, Leila Gonzalez-Correa, was embroiled in a bitter, months-long feud with tenants. She left amid disclosures that she had awarded contracts to acquaintances without following bidding procedures and caused the city to lose $5 million in federal funds by proposing that the Jordan Downs project in Watts be sold to developers.

Clearly hoping to allay concerns over the agency’s past troubles with tenants, Bradley, Shuldiner and Housing Commission Chairman Carl D. Covitz all emphasized the new housing chief’s belief that tenants should control what happens to their communities.

Covitz said that Shuldiner’s long-term assignments will include turning over some projects to tenant managers, with the ultimate goal of tenant ownership of apartment units.

“The commission is completely committed to the idea that tenants should have a say in their destiny,” Covitz said.

Shuldiner pointed out that 21% of New York City’s public housing residents are employed within the projects--a stark contrast to Los Angeles, where only a handful of poor tenants have found work within the developments where they live.

Asked about past Los Angeles directors who have not worked out, Shuldiner said he hoped to avoid such pitfalls by “dealing with people straight up.”