ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / January 26, 2000

LAPLACE – There is a breath of fresh air at the St. John Parish HousingAuthority. His name is Thomas Golsen.For a man who has just taken over a housing authority that has weathered a year of scandal and chaos, new Executive Director Golsen looks amazingly cool and collected.

“Oh, it’s still hectic,” Golsen admits, “and it is difficult to see through all the issues. But over all, everything is OK.”Golsen has been on the job less than two months, and his presence at the St.

John Parish Housing Authority has all ready produced a better atmosphere in the Housing Authority office on Joe Parquet Circle in LaPlace.

There is a sense of purpose and calm as one walks with Golsen back to his office. Employees look relaxed as they are busy working. Golsen jokes andchats with employees. The tension and fear that permeated the officesmonths ago has disappeared into the past.

Golsen comes to this job full of experience. A former resident of publichousing in Oakland, Calif., Golsen is personally familiar with the problems ofhousing. After a stint in the military – stationed in Guam during the VietnamWar – he returned to California and began his education at Hills Engineering College.

He has run housing authorities in San Francisco and Las Vegas, Nev.

Recently, he worked for a Washington D.C. public housing consulting firm.Golsen is no stranger to southeast Louisiana. Several years ago theDepartment of Housing and Urban Development asked him to New Orleans to help straighten out the beleaguered Housing Authority of New Orleans.

“That’s when I really fell in love with this area,” Golsen says, smiling. “I findLouisiana people to be the friendliest, even those in poverty. Everybody hereis willing to share and accommodate.”With such an illustrious background, one wonders why Golsen would accept a position here in St. John Parish. After all, the housing authority here takescare of only 300-plus units and has a budget of a mere $2 million, only a fraction of the size of a housing authority in a place like San Francisco.

“I’ve always liked challenges,” he says. “There is something about theresidents that made me want to help. They really need someone they canhave faith in.”Back in November, Golsen was on his way to Washington D.C., when he got acall from the manager of the B.W. Cooper Housing Development in NewOrleans. She was a friend of Golsen and asked him to call Sheila Morris downin St. John Parish because they were in a desperate situation. The formerexecutive administrator, Patrena Ester, had been fired for negligence and the interim director was threatening to quit because of the total chaos left by the Ester administration.

So he called Morris, chairperson of the St. John Parish Housing AuthorityBoard of Commissioners. Morris asked him to LaPlace to give the board anoverview of the situation and advise them on what to do next.

Golsen laughs. “Well, I came down here and I had no inkling that I would stayhere at all.”After a month of consulting, the Board of Commissioners was so impressed with Golsen’s expertise and the way he handled the situation they picked him for the job of executive director.

He is faced with a daunting task.

“My biggest challenge,” Golsen says, “is trying to overcome the philosophy of the past administration without losing focus on running public housing.”He calls the former administration’s method of collecting rent “a little harsh.”For instance, if the rent was due on a Thursday at 4 p.m. and a personturned in his rent at 4:01, well too bad, that person was evicted for not paying rent. There were no excuses accepted or any extensions of thedeadline given.

“I would not have evicted a lot of people,” claims Golsen. “I found the processof the former administration totally unfair.”Not only was it unfair, he says, but it instilled an atmosphere of fear in the residents.

“The people felt trapped here, intimidated, and there was too much paperwork,” says Golsen. “Part of what happened here was the residentsdidn’t have access to legal advice.”Golsen, who lives with his fiancee in New Orleans East for the present time, is trying to change that attitude of fear and paranoia around. He is accessibleto all residents.

“I usually have a line of 15 to 20 people a day waiting to talk to me, and I try to see them all,” he says. “My staff warned me not to do it, but I’ve givenpeople my cell phone number, and I get calls all the time.”He says it is satisfying to tell people yes they can stay in public housing.

“But even the people I tell no to are satisfied, because they actually had a chance to talk to someone about their problem.” says Golsen. “That’s all theywant, someone to talk to.”As for rent collecting, Golsen is being innovative in his approach. He hasextended deadlines; instead of evictions, he is adding penalty fines to the rent for late payments.

Golsen proudly states, “I haven’t evicted anybody since I’ve been here.”Over at the Edgard Oaks Development he has told the residents to collect the rent and start managing themselves.

“I’m slowly delegating responsibilities to the Edgard residents,” says Golsen.

“This is not a new concept, but it makes them part of the solution. I’m evenletting them decide on evictions.”He defends his actions by saying, “Our responsibility is to house people. Wehave to develop innovative ways to keep people housed.”Another problem Golsen has to deal with is crime and keeping the criminal element out of public housing.

“I haven’t been here long enough to see the entire picture, but I know there is a crime problem,” he says. “But that isn’t anything new. I believe there is adirect correlation between crime and poverty.”The Sheriff’s Office patrols the developments, and there is an active anti- drug program in effect. Public housing also has a one-strike-and-your-outpolicy in which a resident is barred from public housing if they get into trouble with the law only one time.

The Bar List is something used by the housing authority to keep criminals out of public housing. However, Golsen wonders if the Bar List is not being used alittle too liberally.

He recently upset the Sheriff’s Office when he took several people off the Bar List and let them back into public housing.

“I think the executive director should be able to take people off the list,” Golsen says. “I know the deputies will argue with me about this, but mostpeople on the Bar List are there for domestic disputes.”Golsen agrees that people arrested for drug and violent crimes should be on the Bar List.

“Some of the ‘career criminals’ the sheriff had on the list were really just husbands and boyfriends who were trespassing on public property as they tried to see their wives and girlfriends,” says Golsen. “All they are guilty of isviolating the Bar List.”However, Golsen says that in the future he will consult with the Sheriff’s Office before he removes anyone from the Bar List.

Golsen says employment is another deterrent to crime. “One of my goals isto get as many residents working as I can.”Already he has hired residents to paint the housing authority offices, mow the lawns and pick up the trash.

When he was in Las Vegas he worked with gang members. One of the thingshe started was an apprenticeship program for the gangs, getting them into good paying jobs. He would like to try a similar program here.”Some of these guys can be redeemed,” Golsen says. “You just have to showthem there is hope.”Golsen wants to remind people that public housing has really changed in the last 40 years.

“When I lived in the Easter Hills project in Richmond, Calif.,” he says, “themajority of people were veterans with stable families, and it wasn’t as rough as it is now.”Today, Golsen says, 90 percent of the families in public housing are headed by women, most young mothers.

“We have young mothers who are products of other young mothers, and they haven’t been taught the basic living skills,” Golsen says. “They have beentaken care of all their lives, and they don’t know how to do anything else.”But living in public housing isn’t any excuse, admits Golsen.

“Just because you live in public housing doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain,” he says. “Most residents would much rather be someplace else, and we haveto give them the opportunity to get out of public housing.”He is also worried there are no real recreational facilities in the housing developments for residents’ use.

“You have got to do something to keep people’s minds off criminal activities,” Golsen says.

Golsen, a father of three from a previous marriage and grandfather of 10, is himself is a big sports fan, especially of basketball.

He would like to propose a midnight basketball league where the different developments in the parish play against each other.

Golsen has done this before. In fact, he was recognized by President GeorgeBush in 1992 as a “point of light” for his work in organizing the National Public Housing Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas.

Golsen also has the task of smoothing things out between St. John Parishand HUD.

When Ester was in charge, she was sending HUD reports saying everything was just fine, when in fact, everything was in chaos. When the Board ofCommissioners fired Ester, the HUD office in New Orleans was upset and wondered if St. John was usurping HUD’s authority.”I’m not being critical of HUD,” says Golsen. “It’s not their fault about whathappened. I just need to sit down and talk with them.”Also, he has to find missing data and files so he can send in the needed reports to HUD so they will be able to keep funding the housing authority.

When he took over, the former administration had either misplaced, lost or destroyed a lot of financial data necessary to running the housing authority.

He shrugs at these problems. For him they are housekeeping problems thatcan easily be remedied. He thinks that establishing good rapport with HUD,the police and parish government is key to running a successful public housing development.

The hard part is helping the residents.

“We are trying to get them self-sufficient,” Golsen says. “Try and cure thepeople and the rest of the problems disappear.”

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