Pick for new Tacoma Housing Authority director under review after objections from staff
The Tacoma Housing Authority’s five-member Board of Commissioners is reconsidering its choice of candidate to serve as the new executive director of the agency.
The board voted in a special meeting Friday to select John Hall, the current executive director for the Indianapolis Housing Agency, as the new executive director for the Tacoma Housing Authority. April Black, the other top candidate, is serving as the interim executive director for the THA after the retirement of Michael Mirra earlier this year.
The vote was 3-2, with commissioners Shennetta Smith, Minh-Anh Hodge and Michael A. Purter voting in favor of Hall, and commissioners Derek Young and Stanley Rumbaugh in the minority.
Following Friday’s vote, numerous Tacoma Housing Authority staff said they felt the choice was rushed and that the chosen candidate had made problematic statements about the LGBTQ community during his interview with staff. A special meeting was held Monday for people to share those concerns. Hall told The News Tribune on Tuesday he had been unaware of the concerns prior to Monday and felt he had been unfairly portrayed at the meeting.
The meeting also drew the presence of high-ranking public officials in Pierce County and the state, including Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, Pierce County Council member Ryan Mello, state Sen. T’wina Nobles and state Sen. Jeannie Darneille.
“My ask to you today is not just for reconsideration, that’s your decision, but to really slow down and look at the process to make sure that you’re including and listening to every voice,” Woodards said during the meeting.
Nobles said at the meeting she personally felt a little blindsided that a larger search was happening and a selection had been made.
“I personally have heard several concerns from the community — concerns that I take very seriously,” Nobles said.
Following Mirra’s retirement announcement, a job posting was advertised for THA’s executive director position in June. Application closed in July, and initial interviews began at the end of the month. Candidates were narrowed down to two finalists, who conducted interviews with staff earlier this month.
Among the concerns from staff and the public were comments that Hall allegedly made during the interviews with staff departments. According to testimonies at Monday’s meeting, Hall made transphobic comments, referred to housing authority clients as “criminals” and demonstrated a lack of knowledge about diversity, equity and inclusion during his interview for executive director.
A document sent to The News Tribune by a member of the public on Monday shows feedback from various THA members about the two candidates.
One comment states that Hall said during his executive director interview that he “didn’t get the reason” for a policy requiring agencies to employ people who identify as transgender. The feedback also states that Hall previously told a staff member who was uncomfortable with going to the bathroom with people identifying as transgender to “look under the stall wall to gauge the legs of the person next to her” and to leave the bathroom.
Another comment said Hall referred to the need for surveillance because the current tenants at the Indianapolis Housing Authority are “criminals from Chicago.”
Cacey Hanauer, director of client support and empowerment at THA, was one of the staff members to speak at the meeting and referenced “concerning comments” that were heard during the interview process and said the search was “rushed and condensed.”
“Our recommendation is that you start the process over,” Hanauer said at the meeting.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Hall told The News Tribune that he was shocked by the comments and had no idea about them until Monday afternoon before the meeting was held.
“I didn’t have a clue what the concerns were,” he said.
Hall feels that his comments weren’t shown in full from his interviews, which were recorded. The News Tribune has filed a records request for the recordings.
Hall said that he has lived diversity, equity and inclusion work as a Black man his whole life and added that he would not call his tenants criminals.
Hall said he is not transphobic, and that his comments about the staff member and bathrooms was 10 years ago when he worked in Washington D.C. At the time, he said the mayor was implementing a mandate requiring agencies to employ folks who identify as transgender, and he was trying to illustrate that at first he was nervous about how the policy was going to work in the agency.
“I was grappling as a leader, how can I create an inclusive environment?” he said.
Hall, who is originally from Texas, worked at the Indianapolis Housing Agency since 2019, and his contract is coming to an end. He said he began looking for jobs and the THA executive director position caught his eye in June.
“The Northwest (housing agencies), to me, are leaders in the industry; they’re doing innovative things,” Hall said. “To be part of that was attractive to me.”
Hall said he will wait to see whether the board will reconsider their vote from Friday.
“I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted,” he said.
Board members acknowledged Monday night that they had missed important feedback.
Chair Rumbaugh told The News Tribune on Tuesday that the reason for the compressed time frame to select a new executive director was because many directors within the department had retired recently, including the finance, human resources and real estate development directors. The board felt that filling the seat sooner rather than later would help keep forward momentum.
That turned out not to be the right move, Rumbaugh said, and that staff, rightly so, felt devalued and unheard.
“It was fair criticism,” Rumbaugh said. “… It was a misjudgment to expedite the process in the way that we did.”
Board members said that the interviews between the candidates and department heads did not reach the board prior to Friday night’s vote.
“None of this came to us at all and I’m really sorry that it did not,” said board member Hodge at Monday’s meeting.
Following the testimonies, the Board of Commissioners asked staff to collect all feedback on the process and candidates for executive director through Sept. 27, and then provide a single packet back to the board by Oct. 1.
The board will meet the following week to review all feedback for both candidates and vote on reconsideration, or determine next steps.
This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
