Chicago Housing Authority commissioner accused of defrauding the public housing agency

When former Mayor Rahm Emmanual appointed Debra Parker to the Chicago Housing Authority board in 2018, she was touted as the first person with a housing voucher to serve as a board member.

Eight years later, she’s fighting to keep her board seat and the voucher after an internal investigation by the CHA and multiple hearings determined that she committed fraud, according to a copy of the hearing officer’s decision reviewed by the Sun-Times and WBEZ.

“Ms. Parker’s failure to provide true and complete information to CHA cannot be ascribed to mere error and omission,” the hearing officer wrote. “Rather, she engaged in a ‘pattern of actions made with the intent to deceive or mislead, constituting a false statement, omission, or concealment of a substantive fact.’”

The 62-page document — which details what the hearing officer says Parker did and how her conduct was uncovered — became public Tuesday in response to a successful court motion filed on behalf of WBEZ and the Sun-Times. The law firm Mandell P.C. filed the motion to intervene in Cook County circuit court, where Parker is fighting the CHA’s efforts to revoke her voucher.

Parker, who has participated in the government's Housing Choice Voucher housing subsidy program since 2007, currently receives a subsidy to rent a four-bedroom home on the South Side, according to the records.

But the decision indicates that Parker and her son — both who are supposed to be living at the South Side home — have actually been living with the commissioner’s fiancé, Charles Bell, in a luxury high-rise in River North. Parker was being picked up from Bell’s residence, and her board materials were being sent there, the hearing officer wrote.

Matthew Brewer, who chairs the CHA's board and is the interim operating chairman of the agency, told Mayor Brandon Johnson recently that he should consider removing Parker from the board after the hearing officer’s determination.

The decision cites numerous violations: Parker failed to report that her daughter, Lovie Diggs, lived in the subsidized home, nor did she report Diggs’s income as a CHA contractor. Diggs owns a cleaning company that has gotten more than $1 million from CHA contracts, records show. Parker also failed to report other earnings from her fiancé, gambling and her job at another housing authority.

Parker owes the CHA more than $12,000 due to her failures to properly report income and household composition, the hearing officer’s findings show.

In the three hearings that occurred, the first of which was in November 2025, numerous CHA employees testified in the case against Parker.

“I do acknowledge the fact that I had an oversight and I failed to recognize that I was to report income because I was confused as to the biannual reporting and that’s the reason why I didn’t make that report at the time that I should have,” Parker said during one of the hearings, according to the hearing officer’s decision. “I am a nice person. I follow rules, and so the rule is very important to me.”

The voucher program, widely known as Section 8, is the nation’s primary subsidized housing initiative, with tenants in privately owned housing typically 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.

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 hearing for Parker’s emergency motion got pushed to Friday after she failed to appear in court Tuesday.

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

Asked for comment Tuesday, Parker said, “Y’all so obsessed with me. Do what you do” and hung up the phone. She then called back and said she “never committed any kind of fraud in my life. I’m 59 years old and never ever been involved in anything like that.”

Brewer declined to comment beyond what he said in his letter to the mayor. In Brewer’s letter to Johnson earlier this month, a copy of which was obtained by the Sun-Times, he wrote: “The findings of fraud and intentional deception in relation to CHA housing programs raise substantial concerns regarding Commissioner Parker’s fiduciary responsibility.”

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The mayor has the sole authority to nominate and remove CHA board members.

Kathryn Richards, the CHA’s inspector general, declined to comment.

A WBEZ investigation revealed in October that the housing authority had paid a total of more than $22 million to companies owned by Bell, Diggs, and the commissioner's sister, Angela Parker.

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

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

WBEZ reported emails obtained through a public records request from the CHA indicated that Parker 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, both 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. She said in a March court hearing that a legal aid group had rejected her request for assistance and that she was still looking for an attorney. The court had referred her to legal aid services. No attorney appeared to be present on Parker’s behalf at the Tuesday hearing.