An affordable housing consultant will step in as the interim director of D.C.’s troubled public housing agency on August 1, after the DC Housing Authority’s board of commissioners held a long-awaited vote on Wednesday to authorize the contract.
The new interim director, Dorian Jenkins, comes to the DC Housing Authority from consulting firm Nan McKay, a company with deep ties to public housing authorities across the country. Nan McKay worked closely with the DC Housing Authority to reconfigure its operations after an audit of the agency from the federal housing department highlighted dozens of structural issues with DCHA’s operations.
DCHA’s board of commissioners cited Jenkins’ familiarity with the report from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development — and the subsequent operational changes initiated by outgoing DCHA director Brenda Donald — as part of his relevant experience for the job.
Forestalling criticism of his appointment, Jenkins said in brief remarks to the public on Wednesday that he’s “never been a lame duck, warm-the-seat type of guy.”
“That’s not what the board wanted, and it’s not who I am,” he said. “We’re going to make things happen. That is my promise to you.”
Jenkins will wrestle with an agency in flux, as it prepares to reconfigure and open its public housing waiting list for the first time in a decade; train staff on new administrative procedures for its housing voucher program; and lobby HUD to redevelop some of its oldest and...
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