Chicago Housing Authority moves to revoke board member’s housing subsidy

The Chicago Housing Authority is trying to take away the housing subsidy it gives to one of its own board members, alleging longtime Commissioner Debra Parker was caught violating the rules of the agency’s voucher program, the Sun-Times and WBEZ have learned.

CHA Board Chair and interim Operating Chairman Matthew Brewer told Mayor Brandon Johnson this week that he should consider removing Parker from the board because a hearing officer for the agency upheld the termination of her voucher last month.

“The findings of fraud and intentional deception in relation to CHA housing programs

raise substantial concerns regarding Commissioner Parker’s fiduciary responsibility,” Brewer wrote to Johnson in a letter sent Wednesday and obtained by the Sun-Times.

“These shadows of fraud and deception threaten public confidence in the integrity of both the Chicago Housing Authority as well as the city of Chicago,” Brewer wrote.

In an interview Friday, Parker said the CHA “violated my civil rights.” Court records show Parker sued the CHA and Brewer in Cook County Circuit Court, seeking an emergency hearing to prevent the revocation of the housing subsidy. A judge set a hearing for Wednesday.

“I cannot afford the full rent for my unit; I depend on the CHA subsidy,” Parker wrote in a court filing Thursday. “By stopping the subsidy while my petition is pending, I will be evicted by my landlord and I will become homeless.”

Parker has been on the CHA board since 2018, when she was appointed by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. At that time, Parker was touted as the first voucher beneficiary to become a commissioner. The voucher program, widely known as Section 8, is the nation’s primary subsidized housing initiative, with tenants in privately owned housing paying 30% of their income toward rent and the housing authority covering the rest. State law requires the housing authority’s 10-member board of commissioners to include three CHA residents.

Johnson’s spokesperson said Friday officials had begun looking into the issues raised in the letter, but she did not know whether the mayor had made a decision.

“This is an important issue for us and for the mayor,” the spokesperson said.

Parker told WBEZ in a text message on Friday, “I’m remaining on the board.”

A WBEZ investigation revealed in October that the housing authority had paid a total of more than $22 million to companies owned by Parker’s longtime boyfriend, her sister and her daughter.

The commissioner has denied helping her boyfriend and family members to get lucrative business with the CHA, saying board members have no role in contracting decisions at the agency.

Parker’s alleged ‘intent to deceive or mislead’

In his letter to the mayor, CHA leader Brewer told Johnson that a hearing officer for the agency’s Housing Choice Voucher program — which gives subsidies to low-income renters — conducted a multiday hearing and “affirmed termination of Commissioner Parker from the HCV program” last month.

Brewer summarized what he said were the hearing officer’s findings for the mayor. Parker “underreported income and household members, resulting in receipt of housing subsidy for which she was not eligible,” according to the letter.

Brewer also wrote that Parker did not disclose income from a job with “another housing authority.” Although Brewer did not name that housing authority, documents obtained by WBEZ through an open-records request show Parker began working for the Aurora Housing Authority in 2024 and was earning a salary of $55,000 a year there as of November.

Brewer wrote that the CHA “incurred overpayments of at least $12,000” involving Parker’s voucher, but the exact amount “remains unknown” because Parker would not produce the tax documents and business income records that the agency requested.

“The hearing officer found a ‘pattern of actions made with the intent to deceive or mislead, constituting a false statement, omission, or concealment of a substantive fact,’” Brewer wrote to Johnson.

Brewer added that the agency also determined that Parker’s “undisclosed business income was associated with more than $1 million in CHA contracts connected to a household member.” Brewer did not identify that household member in the letter.

WBEZ reported last year that the CHA had paid more than $1 million to her daughter’s company, about $15.1 million to her sister’s company and nearly $6 million to Parks and Bell Cleaning Co., owned by Parker’s longtime boyfriend, Charles Bell.

Parker was involved with Parks and Bell as a board member when it was founded more than a decade ago but stepped down from that role after becoming a CHA commissioner, according to public records.

Although court documents show Parker gets a subsidy to rent a house on the South Side, emails obtained from the CHA indicated that she and Bell toured and applied to rent a market-rate unit in a luxury high-rise in River North in 2023, with an agent offering them a one-year, $4,000-a-month lease for an apartment there.

Asked about that situation last year, Parker and Bell told WBEZ that they do not live together and that only Bell lives in the apartment near downtown.

In her new court case against the CHA, Parker noted that the agency terminated rental assistance for her in a letter on Feb. 27, and that the agency will no longer pay for part of the rent as of the end of this month.

The same day that she got the revocation letter, Parker went to court and filed “for judicial review of the final decision of the CHA to terminate my benefits.” She argued that the revocation of her voucher was “not in accordance with the law,” court records show.

Parker filed the case herself but the court referred her to a legal-aid group that could provide free services, records show.

Asked about Parker’s complaint against him and the CHA, Brewer said in an interview Friday, “I don’t think I personally should be named, but I understand she’s exercising her right to have a potential stay in the termination of her voucher.”

Brewer said he has not heard back from Johnson or his aides since sending the letter about Parker to the mayor. The letter was copied to the mayor’s chief of staff and the Johnson administration’s top lawyer.

Brewer said he felt his letter was “very compelling” but would not say whether he thought the mayor should remove Parker from the CHA board.

“I think the facts speak for themselves,” Brewer said. “The mayor, if he asks my opinion, I will tell him.”

The mayor has sole authority to nominate and remove CHA board members. Parker was reappointed for a second three-year term as commissioner by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2021, with City Council confirming that decision. Parker has continued to serve after the term expired in July 2024.

The mayor made an effort in February to shake up the housing authority board by moving to replace two other commissioners whose terms had expired with two new board members, but the appointments were stalled in the City Council.

The mayor wants retired Ald. Walter Burnett to be the CHA’s next CEO but doesn’t have much support for that from the current agency board. The housing authority has been without a permanent CEO since Nov. 1, 2024, when Tracey Scott resigned from that post.

Accusations against Parker’s sister, daughter

While Parker has been fighting to keep her voucher, her sister and daughter have disputed the findings of investigations into them by the office of CHA Inspector General Kathryn Richards.

Angela Parker, the commissioner’s sister, tried to overbill the agency repeatedly, for a total of more than $175,000, according to a report last year from Richards’ office.

The IG alleged that Parker was confronted about her “exorbitant proposals” to the housing authority and then turned hostile toward the CHA staff who questioned her, threatening to complain to the CHA’s chief executive or the board.

Richards recommended that CHA officials punish Angela Parker however they “deemed appropriate,” with the options including terminating her contract or blocking her from doing any more business with the agency.

But a CHA official decided instead “to issue a warning letter” to Angela Parker, who has denied any wrongdoing.

The CHA also recently reversed course and cleared Debra Parker’s daughter, Lovie Diggs, to do business with the agency after another investigation by the IG’s office.

Diggs was arrested by Chicago police in February 2023 and indicted by a Cook County grand jury, accused of using another woman’s identity to get more than $5,000 in merchandise from a Bob’s Discount Furniture store in Calumet City.

The case was closed in 2024, when prosecutors agreed to drop a felony identity theft charge and Diggs entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge.

Richards’ office concluded that Diggs’ legal issues were cause to block her from doing business “on a permanent basis” as a prime contractor, subcontractor or supplier on any CHA deal. Agency officials then began the process to debar Diggs but dropped the matter last year, after Diggs protested the proposed sanction.

Lizzie Kane is a freelance reporter for the Sun-Times. Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter for WBEZ.