CHA Commissioner Debra Parker ends fight to keep housing voucher, may resign from board

Longtime Chicago Housing Authority Board Commissioner Debra Parker dropped her lawsuit Friday against the housing authority and interim CHA leader Matthew Brewer, ending her fight to keep her housing voucher and hinting that she may resign from her board seat.

Parker recently sued in Cook County Circuit Court, asking a judge to take emergency action to prevent the immediate revocation of the housing subsidy. She alleged that CHA administrators unfairly decided to stop paying much of the rent for a home on the South Side where she used her voucher.

Parker has been a CHA resident representative on the housing authority board for eight years. The agency’s independent inspector general investigated her, and a hearing officer for the CHA last month determined that she committed what the officer described as fraud.

Brewer, who chairs the CHA’s board and also is the interim operating chairman, cited the voucher case in asking Mayor Brandon Johnson recently to consider removing Parker from the board. Johnson has taken no action to replace Parker and publicly offered no opinion on the situation.

Parker previously said she intended to remain on the board, but she told the Sun-Times Friday that she is considering stepping down.

“I am having a hard time serving with folks that have different visions than me,” she said, adding that the current board is “backstabbing” her.

Parker has been on the CHA board since then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in 2018. At that time, Parker was touted as the first voucher beneficiary to become a board commissioner. The voucher program, widely known as Section 8, is the nation’s primary subsidized housing initiative, with tenants in privately owned housing paying 30% of their income toward rent and the housing authority covering the rest. State law requires that the housing authority’s 10-member board of commissioners include three CHA residents.

In court Friday, Parker denied any wrongdoing and suggested that the notoriety surrounding the dispute — which was made public in recent weeks by WBEZ and the Sun-Times — prompted her to drop the case.

“Although I totally disagree with CHA’s hearing officer’s findings, at this time, due to privacy concerns and things of that nature, I am withdrawing,” Parker said in court Friday.

She said she is “moving out” of the unit she rents with the voucher and that the housing authority could now provide that benefit to “somebody else who may need it more than me.”

After the hearing, Parker told the Sun-Times she decided to drop her case because she had “rushed into” it and parts of her lawsuit were “exaggerated.” She said she did not fully review it after a group helped her file the suit in court. When asked who the group was that assisted her, she said she couldn’t remember the name. Court records show that Parker filed the case herself and no attorney appeared in court on her behalf. She said at previous hearings in the case that she unsuccessfully sought free legal counsel.

In the lawsuit, Parker had written, “I cannot afford the full rent for my unit; I depend on the CHA subsidy. By stopping the subsidy while my petition is pending, I will be evicted by my landlord and I will become homeless.”

On Friday, she appeared to walked that back, telling the Sun-Times “I didn’t want to go into the courts saying I had become homeless because that was so far from the truth.”

Parker inquired with the judge Friday about her options to bring her case back to court. The judge said he could not advise her on her legal options and dismissed the case.

Parker also told the Sun-Times that the money she was receiving from the CHA wasn’t worth the “intrusion into my privacy.”

“I outgrew the place,” Parker said. “I appreciate what they did for me as a resident.”

Brewer told the Sun-Times that he was “pleased” the case was dropped.

He also said he has not heard from the mayor about any plans to remove Parker from the CHA board, but added, “I look forward to working with whoever the Mayor chooses to replace her on the board.”

Parker dropped her court fight days after lawyers for WBEZ and the Sun-Times successfully sought the public release of the hearing officer’s 62-page report detailing Parker’s alleged conduct and how it was uncovered. The report indicates that Parker and her son — both who are supposed to be living at the voucher unit — have actually been residing with the commissioner’s fiancé, Charles Bell, in a luxury high-rise in River North.

Parker has participated in the government’s Housing Choice Voucher rental subsidy program since 2007. She used the voucher to rent a four-bedroom home, CHA records show.

The hearing officer wrote Parker failed to report that her daughter, Lovie Diggs, lived in the subsidized home, and she did not 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.

WBEZ reported in October that the housing authority had paid a total of more than $22 million to companies owned by Diggs, the commissioner’s sister and her longtime boyfriend Charles Bell.

Parker also was accused of not disclosing other earnings from Bell, gambling and her job at the housing authority in Aurora.

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

“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 Sun-Times and WBEZ reported Wednesday that Parker conceded making mistakes during her testimony at one of the hearings.

“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, according to the hearing officer’s decision. “I am a nice person. I follow rules, and so the rule is very important to me.”

On Friday, Parker and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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 commissioner has denied helping Bell, Diggs and sister Angela Parker to get lucrative business with the CHA, saying board members have no role in contracting decisions.

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 that 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. Parker said again on Friday that she doesn’t live with Bell.

As for where she will live now, Parker said she is considering buying a house.