With the scent of corruption and political attacks swimming prominently within the Hoboken Housing Authority in recent weeks, an article in the Jersey Journal appeared yesterday announcing the first phase of expanding it with new construction in Hoboken.

There’s only one problem.  Nothing has been approved by any legislative body.

The article without journalistic attribution features mysterious unnamed HHA officials discussing the initiation of an RFP process, describing the groundbreaking of 44 HHA units on Harrison Street as a done deal that is neither done nor approved going to to construction later this year.

Who fed this misinformation to the Jersey Journal and why?

At the previous HHA meeting, before the proceedings ED Carmelo Garcia pleads with Chair Jake Stuiver to renew HHA attorney Charles Daglian’s contract.  With the mysterious Jersey Journal article claiming an approved 25% expansion, are you beginning to get the picture why? A “short list” of developers is waiting to go.

As important, what does the broader Hoboken public think of expanding the Hoboken Housing Authority?  Did anyone even hold a single public meeting with the wider Hoboken community to ask what they think?

Was there a poll commissioned asking Hoboken residents and taxpayers who pay the freight what they would like to see in a HHA redevelopment?

The Old Guard is in a serious rush to get the HHA expansion going breaking ground and present it to the rest of Hoboken as a fait accompli.  While their initial proposal of massive monoliths have been scaled back, what’s on the table is large-scale expansion.

Around the country and in neighboring Jersey City, the old model of massive project structures has been reduced to three story buildings with far smaller density but that is not the case in Hoboken.

The plan being thrust on the City is to increase the current stock of 800 plus units to over 1,000.

Exactly who will be cashing in remains to be seen.  You can be sure Executive Director Carmelo Garcia knows.  He already has plenty of questions swirling around him with the yet questionable legal re-appointment of Charles Daglian.  Two weeks back they advocated for a renewal of Daglian’s contract in a circus atmosphere raising all kinds of concerns about conflicts of interests.

Those concerns are not going away any time soon.

Do you support increasing the size of the HHA? What impact do you think that would have on the larger Hoboken community in terms of costs in policing, education and other services underwritten by the Hoboken taxpayer?

Working against the national model for smaller Housing Authorities, ED Carmelo Garcia is pushing to ram through a denser Hoboken Housing Authority of over 1,000 units without any of the wider Hoboken public having a say about any of it.