Street Says Greene 'Lost His Bearings'

PHILADELPHIA - The Philadelphia Housing Authority has a new leader as the fallout continues over a diversity training seminar that included belly dancers, karaoke singers and salsa dance instructors.

Interim Executive Director Michael Kelly took the reins at the PHA Monday afternoon after former Executive Director Carl Greene was fired by the PHA board two months ago.

Kelly steps in as a firestorm is growing over a 2006 diversity party on PHA property.

This evening, former mayor John Street had a few things to say about the use of PHA money for belly dancers and costumes.

Fox 29’s Dave Schratwieser reports that while Street, who is the PHA Board Chairman, sees the value of diversity training, he is not too happy about the use of belly dancers and such.

The PHA spent $17,000 on the diversity training event and close to $2,000 on the belly dancers and costumes for the 200 mid-level managers who attended the conference.

HUD officials are now looking into this and earlier today, Street told Dave, that with thousands of people on a waiting list for public housing, this was not a good use of PHA money.

Street added, “Diversity training is certainly appropriate for an agency that serves as many different communities as the PHA serves, however, there clearly was a part of it that was very, very questionable and without having been there, the photographs and just the kind of scene it created just really seemed very inappropriate. It seems along the way, Carl Greene just lost his bearings, his sense of good judgement. I suspect some of those costs were completely inappropriate and probably will be disallowed.”

Dave also spoke to Clifford Haines, Carl Greene’s lawyer, about these latest developments.
He told Dave that Greene had nothing to do with organizing this event. His focus, Haines said, was on building public housing, and he posed the question about whether the board even knew about the training seminar.

Carle Greene is still out of town. He is suing the PHA for over $600,000 I back salary. The PHA has promised a counter-suit.

HUD, the FBI and a grand jury are still investigating the settlement of close to one million dollars in sex harassment lawsuits against Carl Greene, along with the disappearance of millions of dollars in PHA building supplies.