I-Team Investigations

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― It's a major CBS 3 I-Team investigation that has been a year in the making. Investigative reporter Jim Osman looks into the travel expenses of a public agency that provides affordable housing for Philadelphia residents with limited incomes.

The head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Carl Greene, makes an annual salary of $275,000. That is more than the income of the city's mayor and Pennsylvania's governor.

As executive director of PHA Green has fired hundreds of workers and cut services to residents.

So you'd think he'd be very careful about spending your tax dollars?

Instead CBS 3's I-team exposes how Carl Greene has traveled to luxurious places you might never get to see and you paid for it.

Places like the Waldorf Astoria, the gold standard of luxury. A hotel where many of us would be lucky to afford for a get-away. In contrast a roach-infested apartment in a Philadelphia public housing project is the last place you'd want to be.

"I don't think it's fair for anyone to live like this at all," one PHA resident told us as she pointed to roaches crawling all around her apartment.

The head of the Philadelphia's Public Housing Authority isn't spending his nights in PHA housing.

Instead Carl Greene's housing authority is spending more than a $100,000 of your tax dollars staying at swanky hotels like the Waldor Astoria and luxury resorts.

PHA travel records obtained by CBS 3 show Greene jetting from Palm Springs to Las Vegas to Palm Beach for conferences even though he's laid off hundreds of workers, including housing authority police officers because of budget cuts.

In December, 2006, Greene and another staffer spent $3600 at New York's glamorous Waldorf Astoria hotel. That's where Greene attended a three day social gathering hosted by the Pennsylvania Society. And once again you paid for it.

While dining at the Waldorf in 2006, Greene knew what was about to happen at PHA.

On a January 2007 morning National Public Radio told the nation of Philadelphia's housing crisis and reported that the Philadelphia Housing Authority had announced it was laying off 350 employees.

"It will have a dramatic impact not only in the city but around the country," said then-mayor John Street.

During the same week that Greene handed out 350 pink slips, the executive director slipped out of town to the luxurious Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix. A conference trip that cost the taxpayers $2430.

"The public reacts very badly to news like this, even without the layoffs people say these trips are uneccessary, outrageous," said Zack Stalberg, the Chief Executive Officer for the Committee of Seventy in Philadelhphia.

The CBS 3 I-team uncovered a pattern of expensive conference trips.

In March 2007 Green spent $2100 at the Ritz Carlton just outside of Washington, DC.

In a five month period in early 2006 Greene traveled to two different Scottsdale Arizona resorts at a cost of $4600.

Flights to Palm Beach and the Four Seasons along with trips to Palm Springs helped rack up $165,500 in travel related expenses by the housing authority since 2004.

The woman who asked us to conceal her identity is angry about Greene's expensive trips when she lives in public housing apartment that is in disrepair and roach-infested.

And when she's called PHA's maintance workers for she says they told her no one could come.

"They said because there was a lot of them laid off," she said.

Greene has repeatedly blamed the Bush Administration for PHA's budget crisis. It is the federal government that provides the Philadelphia Housing Authority with money to operate.

"It's only through creative partnerships can we endure through the kind of budget cuts and slashings that has occured under this administration," said Greene in a news conference.

But the Bush Administration isn't to blame for Greene's Las Vegas conference getaway in late 2005.

Greene's air fare cost $1800 from Philly to Vegas. PHA's Deputy Director Carolyn Carter's seat cost $2950 dollars. And add another $2900 to pay for PHA Commissioner Nellie Reynolds plane ticket. In total, they spent $10,000 for a three day trip to Las Vegas.

When the I-team went to Greene with our database showing 3 years of travel records we asked him to look at the travel expenses on it. But he refused.

"I wanna pay attention to the camera, sorry," he said.

When we asked him why at the time when he was laying people off he was flying out to a resort in Phoenix?

He told us, "Even though we were laying people off we were still building houses."

Greene says his trips are legitmate business where he learns about housing trends, even if they are at resorts.

"When you look over all at the size of this agency and the amount of our travel budget we have a very modest travel budget, a meager travel budget, we travel very infrequently here," said Greene.

But the records show that in 2006 Greene traveled 20 percent of his work time.

His constituents at the Bartram Village Project say it's ironic that the man who is Philadelphia's champion of liveable and affordable housing is staying at the most luxurious hotels and resorts while they live in substandard housing.

"Animals live better than we do," said the PHA resident who showed us around her apartment.

"We stand by our business travel practices as an essential and appropriate expenditure. We intend to continue operating a transparent, efficient, accountable organization, including the way we manage our travel," says PHA spokesman Kirk Dorn.

Watch CBS 3 in the days ahead as the I-Team works to follow up on the questionable travel expenses of PHA.

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