Homestead Housing Authority Hit With Sexual Harrassment Lawsuit

 

 

 

                                                                 

 

Oscar Hentschel                                                                                Executive Director at Homestead Housing Authority    

                                                                                    

 more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/01/3078121/homestead-housing-authority-hit.html#storylinBy Christina Veiga

 

 

By Christina Veiga

cveiga@MiamiHerald.com

The former deputy director of the Homestead Housing Authority has sued the agency for sexual harassment, retaliation and negligence.

The suit, filed in federal court Oct. 26, claims that Executive Director Oscar Hentschel sexually harassed former employee Monica Rusconi, that she was fired because she filed a complaint about the harassment and that the housing authority board was negligent for not removing Hentschel after the complaint was filed.

According to the complaint, Hentschel “routinely” called women a derogatory word that also means a female dog, and that he made comments about “female bodies and sexual activity.”
Rusconi and her attorney, Jeffrey Goodz, declined to comment. So did Hentschel and board attorney Gilberto Pastoriza.

Rusconi had worked as the second-in-command at the housing authority for 11 years before Hentschel was hired to lead the agency in March 2011.

Months after his arrival, two women filed sexual harassment complaints against Hentschel.

Despite calls from Mayor Steve Bateman to temporarily remove the director while the complaints could be investigated, board members kept Hentschel in his position.
http://homesteadishome.blogspot.com/2011/11/bateman-pens-his-dear-oscar-letter.html

They hired an independent investigator to look into the claims and considered moving Rusconi’s office away from Hentschel.

Rusconi “was advised to just stay in her office to avoid Hentschel,” the lawsuit states.

One woman later dropped her complaint against Hentschel and told the human resources investigator she had been forced to file it by Rusconi because Rusconi did not get along with the executive director.

Rusconi herself filed two complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. The commission, according to the lawsuit, did nothing. Two months after Rusconi made the formal accusations — which she told board members of in an email — Rusconi was fired.

Her lawsuit claims that Hentschel and the housing authority the federal and state civil rights acts and state employment laws.

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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/01/3078121/homestead-housing-authority-hit.html#storylink=cpy

 http://homesteadishome.blogspot.com/2011/11/twenty-four-hours-was-all-it-took-for.html

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What Are They Up To At The Homestead Housing Authority???

 

 

By Christina Veiga

cveiga@MiamiHerald.com

The Homestead Housing Authority wants to take back control of its largest housing center for low-income farmers after federal officials yanked that control away due to financial mismanagement and violations of federal rules.

If successful, the move would allow Homestead to rent units to farm workers who aren’t permanent U.S. residents, even if they are undocumented. The move also would free the authority from federal standards for upkeep of the rental units, according to authority executive director Oscar Hentschel.

Homestead officials have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release the South Dade center from the federal program that funds it and governs who can live there.

The USDA in November 2011 found that the authority was so poorly run, that it required Homestead to hire an independent management company to run about 600 units of housing. Releasing the South Dade center from USDA guidelines would mean Homestead could manage those units itself.

The majority of the issues cited by USDA predated the tenure of the current housing authority administration.

According to documents sent to the USDA, Homestead plans to keep the units as low-income housing. South Dade is the largest of the authority’s centers, with 270 housing units, Hentschel told board members at a recent meeting.

Hentschel told board members that dropping out of the USDA program will give the authority more discretion in deciding whom it can rent homes to.

“We could keep it for farm workers, but we would be putting the conditions,” Hentschel said. “The farm workers who do not qualify for USDA assistance, for example, we can qualify them over there. If they don’t have papers, they don’t have a problem. If they don’t have work permits, they don’t have a problem.”

In December 2011, authority officials were left with little choice but to crack down on people who were given housing in the centers, even though they didn’t qualify under federal rules. In a scathing report, the USDA had blasted Homestead for renting homes to people who were not in the country legally.

But others fell in a gray area: they had permission to work in the United States, but they still didn’t qualify for the housing because the USDA requires renters to be permanent U.S. residents or citizens. Still others were told they didn’t qualify because their employers, usually small nursery owners, only provided 1099 tax forms, which are usually for self-employed people. The self-employed don’t qualify under USDA rules to live in its housing centers.

Hentschel at the March 29 board meeting suggested the USDA would support releasing the South Dade center because the units there are so old that it’s hard to keep them up to date with the USDA guidelines.

“Even though the camp is habitable and it’s in decent shape, it’s not necessarily up to USDA standards,” Hentschel said. “But we can still have it there and work on it and keep it livable, and make it a little bit better, and we won’t have their constantly reviewing and failing us.”

USDA spokeswoman Ellen Boukari did not respond to an email and phone call for comment.

Another issue with the South Dade camp: 56 homes there lay in the flight paths of the Homestead Air Reserve Base. The area has been identified as having a high potential for crashes.

“The latest on the talks to the military is we are awaiting for their approval to release some land on the other side of the base for us to start developing a new housing community with hopefully USDA funding,” Hentschel told board members.

Through an air base spokesman, Larry Ventura, an air base official who deals with these safety issues, said the Homestead Housing Authority has not been in contact with the base.

Hentschel was not immediately available for comment.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/11/2845871/homestead-wants-to-take-back-one.html#storylink=cpy

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Housing Authority Board Member Lois Jones Claims Agency Is Biased

A Homestead Housing Authority board member claims officials are biased toward hiring Mexicans. But the nationalities of new hires there are not all known

By Christina Veiga

cveiga@MiamiHerald.com

A Homestead Housing Authority board member claims biased hiring and firings have taken place at the federally funded agency.

Board Member Lois Jones claims as much in a letter to the NAACP, the State Attorney’s Office and other local and state agencies. She claims housing authority officials want to hire more Mexican employees, and are firing non-Mexican employees.

Housing Authority Executive Director Oscar Hentschel and the majority of board members are of Mexican heritage.

Hentschel, who has led the troubled agency for about a year, did not return an email for comment. But he has addressed the issue, which has come up before, in a previous letter to one of the authority’s funding agencies, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“All employees that were terminated were dismissed with a valid cause,” he wrote.

He called Jones’ allegations “unfounded.”

Four employees have been fired since Hentschel joined the authority, which is tasked with providing housing assistance for farm workers and low-income tenants.

Two of those fired were Puerto Rican, one was Argentinian and another was black, according to the employees.

Four have been hired since Hentschel joined the authority. Their ethnic backgrounds are not known, although one of the new hires’ application says he went to school in Cuba. Another new hire, Christopher Orama, said he was born in Peru, after his family fled from Cuba.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Orama said his nationality was not a factor in his interview for his position as a maintenance man.

“That never came up,” he said.

Three of the employees fired had no negative job performance evaluations prior to being fired, according to their personnel records. The performance reviews of the fourth employee, Monica Rusconi, are not known because her personnel file is missing.

Jeanette Torres, a six-year employee was fired because her “work habits and production has fallen severely below the appropriate standards,” according to a termination letter. Torres said she is Puerto Rican.

Torres marked files as having been completed, when in fact they were not, according to the letter.

“We were working on them. It’s not like the files were not going to be finished,” Torres said.

But Torres said the bigger issue is that she was denied unemployment benefits after she says the executive director’s assistant, Brandy Ramirez, lied during a hearing.

Torres said she was blamed by Ramirez for the findings in a November report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA in part funds the housing authority’s $20 million budget, and recently blasted Homestead in a report for allowing its properties to deteriorate while employees were given cushy benefits.

One of the report’s finding was that the housing authority was not following the protocol for assigning rental assistance, and therefore some of the neediest renters went without help.

Torres said that in her position, she was not responsible for assigning rental assistance.

The Housing Authority did not immediately provide Torres’ title or job description for this report.

Ramirez did not return an email for comment.

Eudalia Bermudez, a six-year veteran, was the next to be fired. She also is Puerto Rican.

She was given the boot because she worked on files of her daughter, according to a letter by Hentschel. Bermudez’s daughter receives Section 8 housing vouchers from the federal government, which the authority manages.

Bermudez said she did not assign any benefits to her daughter that she wasn’t entitled to under Section 8 rules.

Robert Simmons worked longest for the authority — 30 years. He is black.

He was fired because he took copper wire out of an authority building that was going to be demolished. Copper prices have been high lately and the metal can be resold.

But Simmons said he was given permission to remove the copper, and that other employees did the same, according to Jones’ letter. The others were not fired, according to Jones.

He has also been denied unemployment benefits. Simmons was living in a housing authority property, but has been evicted, he said. He is now homeless, Jones wrote.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/10/2740961/board-member-says-homestead-housing.html#storylink=cpy

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