The D.C. Housing Authority says it is undergoing an “urgent transformation” to address a “multitude of inherited problems” with how it manages the city’s stock of public housing, and will soon launch a citywide blitz to inspect and repair thousands of housing units serving low-income residents.

The pledges are included in the authority’s formal response to the recent scathing federal assessment that laid bare dozens of problems with how public housing is maintained and managed in the city, prompting anger from housing advocates and calls for sweeping changes from many elected officials.

The assessment, which was conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and made public in October, found that the Housing Authority was failing at some of its most basic tasks, from keeping public housing units in habitable condition to ensuring that every usable unit is actually offered to the thousands of low-income residents who have waited years for a place to live. Most damningly, the assessment found that a quarter of the 8,000 units of public housing across 60 buildings the authority manages were vacant, one of the highest rates for any such agency nationwide.

In the 59-page response, the authority’s leaders agree with many of the 82 deficiencies identified by HUD, calling the overall assessment “thorough” and “unsurprising.” Additionally, they say they are rapidly moving to correct those deficiencies while rebuilding an agency they say had fallen into dysfunction over many years.

“When I say things didn’t get broken overnight and they can’t get fixed overnight, it’s not a slogan or an excuse,” said D.C. Housing Authority director Brenda Donald, who took over the agency in August 2021, in an interview on Tuesday morning. “It really is based on my experience of running these large, complex agencies that it’s not just meeting some requirements and checking them off the box. It really is about changing the organizational culture and embedding those changes into the agency so that someone, the next director, is building on and moving forward and not having to start all over, which pretty much I have had to do.”

In the response, the authority says it closed more than 10,000 maintenance and repair work orders over the summer (Donald said another 4,000 were closed since then), has contacted nearly 6,000 people on the waiting list for public housing (the list closed in 2013, and has more than 22,000 names on it), will launch “mass eligibility events” in 2023 to connect low-income residents to housing options, and will kick off a 16-week campaign in January to inspect and repair public housing units across the city.

“We’re going on parallel tracks,” said Donald. “One is to really make sure that the people who actually are living in our public housing now live in safe, sanitary, and healthy conditions. And also that we are bringing our vacant units that we can up to code and made ready for other residents, for new tenants to move in.”

The authority does concede in its response that it still faces “fundamental issues” in how it manages its waiting lists (on top of the list for public housing, there’s a separate list of 40,000 people for vouchers), how it charges and collects rent, and how it keeps track of how many units are occupied and which are in need of repairs. Donald also says the vacancy rate remains too low, though she predicts it will soon start rising. And the authority’s response says it will be working with multiple consultants — some hired by Mayor Muriel Bowser — to address short- and long-term changes required by HUD. Many of the changes have to be completed by March 30, 2023.

But the authority’s responses haven’t quieted all of its critics.

“I think it’s more of the same, which is partial answers and not taking responsibility,” said Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) in an interview on Tuesday afternoon. “The agency needs wholesale reform. I think it needs a leadership change in terms of having a executive director with subject-matter expertise in public housing and in housing finance. But it goes beyond that. We need to have a well-functioning Housing Authority that actually performs the mission of a housing authority, which is to provide safe, affordable housing to our lowest income working families. The mission of the Housing Authority is not to provide valuable land for the mayor to fulfill her other housing goals.”

Silverman points to other recent issues at the authority, including allegations of illegal contracting and a recent audit by the D.C. Inspector General that found the agency failed to use $60 million in funds for rental assistance because of internal financial and management problems.

That criticism of the Housing Authority and Donald’s leadership have been shared by others, including Attorney General Karl Racine, who has called the agency the city’s “largest slumlord.” And last month the D.C. Council passed a bill imposing a slate of initial reforms at the authority, including new training requirements and consumer protections for tenants in public housing. Some advocates have even called on HUD to take over the Housing Authority, a possibility Bowser seemed to want to forestall with a letter she sent on Tuesday to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge.

“Secretary Fudge, this is a matter my administration and I take very seriously. We are committed to taking care of those who need our attention most, and central to our D.C. values is the belief that a safe and stable life begins with safe and stable housing. Just as I said when we met in October with HUD senior leadership, I continue to commit the full and unequivocal support of the District Government to requiring the critical issues raised by HUD with respect to DCHA are addressed,” wrote Bowser.

Bowser also told Fudge that she supports Donald, a former deputy mayor under Bowser and director of the Child and Family Services Agency. “She has an accomplished record of turning around troubled agencies,” she wrote.

On Wednesday Donald will face members of the D.C. Council in a public hearing on the HUD assessment and the authority’s response to it. Donald tells DCist/WAMU she will ask lawmakers to give her time to make the changes she’s promising.

“I think [councilmembers] want to hold people accountable. I’m obviously the number one person that should be held accountable. But now we have some very tangible commitments with timeframes. And so what I hope to convey to the council is that we have a plan,” she said. “Give us a chance to put this plan in place.”

Silverman, though, isn’t convinced that time alone will do it.

“Brenda Donald might be right. There needs to be more time, but there needs to be more. There also needs to be leadership with subject-matter expertise,” she said. “We don’t want somebody who is on a learning curve. We need somebody who’s at the top of the curve who can help us execute quickly the housing repairs that are needed, use our money effectively and efficiently so that we can make sure that our low-income families are in safe housing that’s dignified, and that we can leverage our biggest low-income housing asset, which is our public housing authority’s buildings and lands so that we can actually have a city that is equitable.”