At least 50 Baltimore public housing employees who were paid with Department of Housing and Urban Development funds to do building maintenance refused to do their jobs unless women residents also paid with sexual favors.
All 50 maintenance workers — whose unmet demands left women to freeze in apartments without working heat and other needed repairs — have been fired. An $8 million tax-funded settlement has been reached, but none of the responsible employees have been criminally charged.
One tenant in the Gilmor Homes Project in Baltimore, a single mother with four children, lived for several years with exposed electrical lines because she refused the advances of multiple government employees. Other women did have sex with the workers because they were scared or did not want to live without the repairs, NBC reported.
Even the maintenance supervisor, Clinton Coleman, reportedly demanded sex every time a repair was needed.
Lynette Cooper, 51, said she believes a maintenence man who touched her sexually also stole belongings from her home.
“A criminal case that Cooper filed against the man was dropped,” the Baltimore Sun reported, noting that HUD would not discuss the terms of the settlement.
Sexual harassment of women seeking government housing by government employees and private Section 8 landlords is common, with 1,600 complaints filed last year nationally, the Sun reported.
Housing project employees have extra leverage over residents who pay little in rent because an astonishing number of housing project families violate HUD rules by being involved in crime, refusing to do volunteer work or to seek full-time jobs, and allowing men to live with them despite saying they are single mothers. Vindictive employees could could retaliate by selectively enforcing the rules.
Nineteen women are part of the original settlement, but the government is allowing more who were harmed to join.
In an example of HUD’s disinterest in reserving public housing for people who are actually poor, the 19 women will be given Section 8 vouchers to move from housing projects to a government-funded private apartment, even though each will be receiving a payment of up to $400,000. The median sales price of homes sold in Baltimore during the fourth quarter of 2015 was $175,000.
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