Nation's only black HUD regional officer fought bureaucracy - and won - Gertrude W. Jordan, Department of Housing and Urban Development

Jet, Jan 11, 1993

Gertrude W. Jordan, regional administrator for HUD's Chicago regional office, waged successful battle to clean up the city's public housing.

When Gertrude W. Jordan was named regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's regional office in Chicago seven years ago, she found herself at the eye of a storm.

Besieged by problems within the cites public housing, she took on the federal bureaucracy to implement change and has come out a winner.

The Chicago Housing Authority, the second largest public housing authority in the nation, was rife with mismanagement and financial corruption, she said. Recommended for the post by then Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, Jordan was - and still is - the only Black and only woman named regional administrator within the nation's 10 regions. "I was a little skittish in the beginning," she admits, "but I guess they wanted me to wade in the water to see if I would sink or swim."

While she oversees federal housing policy in five other states (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota), Jordan, 59, an outspoken and no-nonsense manager, said her first plan of action was to restore "some semblance of order" to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). A hands-on manager, she left the confines of her loop office to tour residential facilities and talk to residents to assess the scope of the problem. What she found was astounding.

"People were living in filth. There was no maintenance. Garbage was being dumped down the stairwells and the stairwells were full of maggots. The elevators breaking down were a major problem. Kids were being killed by gangs. Residents were dying because paramedics and ambulances wouldn't go in there," she stated.

Realizing $34 million in taxpayer dollars were being allocated to the CHA, Jordan said, "I knew people didn't have to live this way, especially with the kind of money that was coming into Chicago. The horror stories put a lot of fire in my belly."

Jordan said many of her staffers who rallied around her believed she was fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. But Samuel Pierce, who served as secretary of HUD at the time, said "if she's got the (guts) to make changes, I support her 110 percent," she said.

The first thing she did was tighten the CHA purse strings, "We were giving them money, but they didn't have receipts and we couldn't get their books audited." So she implemented a "zero threshold" policy for CHA, which meant "they couldn't spend a dime without my approval," she said.

The next phase meant getting residents involved in their communities. Federal dollars went to funding resident training programs, voter registration campaigns and on-site educational programs for youngsters.

The CHA, under the direction of CHA Board President Vince Lane and with Jordan's blessings, was the first in the nation to undergo "security sweeps" to purge the buildings of gang members, drug dealers, weapons and squatters.

Twenty-one different resident organizations were established to keep the buildings operating smoothly and two facilities have residents who manage their own properties, she said in running down a list of accomplishments during her tenure.

While Jordan is uncertain what role - if any - she'll play at HUD in the Clinton administration, she's outlasted the timetable put on the rumor mill for her departure and other appointees whose average stay in the Chicago post is about 15 months.

While her next move is still up in the air, "I know there's life for me after HUD," she said from her office overlooking the city. "I like helping people and I'll still be out there doing that in the area of housing." But one thing's for sure, "I'm not going to go home and bake cookies."