Mission impossible

From South Boston to Mission Hill, housing czar Sandra Henriquez is in the hot seat

by Yvonne Abraham

Boston housing authority chief Sandra Henriquez hands out ice cream and sodas at the agency's annual children's Christmas bash, in South Boston. She seems to be having fun, keeping three Santas away from each other, watching 900 kids and their parents party. "Look at this face," she says of a perplexed-looking, fat-cheeked two-year-old. "Isn't that a face?" She laughs easily, and skylarks with a coworker who flicks water at her. Last year she dressed up as a "holiday fairy," with a big dress and a mask, but the kids got scared. This year, it's just the red sweater and two small Christmas bells around her neck.

Not everything in the past few weeks has been such fun for Henriquez. On December 1, HUD warned the city that if it didn't get the problem-plagued, much-delayed redevelopment of the Mission Main housing project off the ground immediately, $50 million in federal funds would be withdrawn. Less than two weeks after that embarrassing announcement, five white residents of the Old Colony housing development, in South Boston, assaulted two Hispanic women. It's being treated as the latest in a long history of racial incidents at the development.

In her first year on the job, Henriquez's mantra seemed to be "What's past is past." But as she approaches the end of her second year, the BHA's problems are no longer leftovers from the old order. Henriquez isn't the new kid anymore: those problems are now her own.

Henriquez grew up middle-class -- house in the suburbs near Rochester, New York, swimming pool, two parents, two-car garage. She did premed at Boston University, tried teaching, ended up in property management. Before Menino tapped her as BHA chief, she'd spent 10 years working for his friend Mark Maloney at Maloney Properties, in Needham. Now she's in charge of 18 family-housing developments, which house about 50,000 people, and a budget of about $80 million. She runs this equivalent of a small city from a nondescript office downtown.

Henriquez says she wants to run public housing the same way a private landlord would run his property, providing fast service, efficient management, and realistic budgets. But private landlords don't have the problems that now beset Henriquez. "Public housing used to be somewhere you could get a leg up and then buy a home in the suburbs," she says. These days, legs up are hard to come by, and folks don't move out of developments the way they once did. There are currently more than 12,000 families waiting for public housing in Boston; welfare reform will make the situation worse.

Mission Main has been a special problem. Since it received its HUD Hope VI grant in August of 1993, the Mission Hill development has been mired in disagreements and construction delays. Residents of the 23-acre development felt left out of decisions on its future; tenants, the city, and HUD squabbled over the designs for years; developers Arthur Winn and Ed Fish, forced into a shotgun marriage because tenants had objected to the city-chosen Fish, have clashed on the project's direction; and the BHA objected that the developers' estimates were too high.

Henriquez, interviewed the day before going into what all parties hope will be final negotiations to get the development going, accentuates the positive. "We're working hard to put the past in the past," she says. Pushed, she adds: "HUD, the developers, and the residents now know the city and the BHA speak as one. Some folks did not accept that."

Mayor Menino has designated top aide David Passafaro, who has been closely involved in the project for a couple of months, to go in and get the job done.

Menino bristles at the suggestion that calling in Passafaro reflects badly on Henriquez: "Look at Orchard Park," he says, referring to the Roxbury development that received HUD funds at the same time as Mission Main, and whose renovation is almost complete. "She got that done, didn't she? Bringing someone in to help you doesn't mean you're a failure."

Meanwhile, some Mission Main residents are in temporary housing elsewhere, and those who remain are surrounded by piles of rubble from the partial demolition done last year to force some progress. "It looks like Beirut after the bombing," says Tom Keane, whose district includes part of the development.

Henriquez also has her hands full with Old Colony. The boxy cluster of squat buildings in the heart of South Boston has been buckling under the pressure of compulsory racial integration -- and intense media scrutiny -- since 1988. It's not the only development -- or neighborhood -- where racial tensions flare, but it's the most notorious.

For the past 18 months, the BHA has run staff training sessions on diversity, tolerance, and civil rights in the hope of easing the tensions. The most recent Old Colony incident raises the question of just how effective Henriquez's attempts to foster tolerance in public housing have been.

Even Henriquez herself is at something of a loss. "What happened at Old Colony baffles me, given that it's 1997," she says, shaking her head. "But I want everyone to know that the BHA has zero tolerance for civil-rights and drug violations."

The resident families of those involved in the latest assault have been given notices to quit the development, and their cases will be headed for housing court on a fast track. There will be no mediation.

Whether swift justice will prevent future assaults is another question, but maybe it's time for a different approach: maybe integration is a luxury Boston's public housing can no longer afford. Henriquez says she's trying to get HUD to approve what white residents in Old Colony and other Southie developments have been advocating for a long time: location-based waiting lists. Right now, the family at the top of a single citywide list goes to the first open apartment, regardless of location. With a site-based waiting list, their preferences would be taken into account. "People should be able to live at the developments they choose," says Henriquez.

Such a system would be the housing equivalent of reintroducing neighborhood schools, a political hot potato that conjures up images of instant resegregation. But Menino backs her up. "You and I can choose where we live," he says. "Why not give it to the hard-working people to choose? Resegregation is yesterday's news. Public housing is 80 percent minority."

Despite her properties' many problems, Henriquez says she's hopeful. She freely admits that she sees the world "through really thick rose-colored glasses."

"I'm always so surprised when something like the Old Colony incident happens, so I have to say, `Yes, it will improve.' "

Then again, what else is she going to say?

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.