The Housing Authority

Even seated in her wheelchair, Lizzie Brown has a swagger. She’ll lean forward, cock her head and raise her eyebrows as though some kid just tried to shortchange her at 7-Eleven. The look crosses her face when she remembers how a man was gunned down in her apartment complex last fall.

On October 1, four men sat outside a three-story brick building in Chouteau Courts, a public housing complex on Independence Avenue. It was still midmorning, but the men drank cans of Budweiser as they played dice. A little before noon, an argument broke out. One man refused to make good on a wager. Another fired four shots from a semiautomatic pistol.

When police arrived three minutes later, they saw 33-year-old Clyde Holden sprawled on the sidewalk, his blood staining a patio strewn with beer cans, cigarette butts and one spent bullet. A crowd had already dispersed. Nobody wanted to talk.

Brown didn’t see it, but she’d been expecting it.

The 67-year-old with gold-rimmed glasses has used a wheelchair for 15 years, her legs weakened by arthritic knees. She spends much of her time in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband, Walter, who also uses a wheelchair. So when gunshots became a daily occurrence in early 2006, they were usually at home to hear it.

On April 28, 2006, Brown was making coffee in the kitchen around 5:15 a.m. when she heard two men thunder down the stairs to the landing near her apartment. She listened as they argued in front of her door. One said he wanted the other’s money.

“The other boy said, ‘I’m going to show you something,’ and then pow,” Brown recalls. He fired the gun less than 10 feet from her kitchen counter. She called 911 but told the operator she didn’t want cops knocking on her door, making her a target. She also called Chouteau’s property manager and the executive and deputy directors of the Housing Authority of Kansas City. She called the HAKC’s public safety director, too. She knew all of their numbers by heart.

Over the past year, Brown has been on a mission to prove that the Housing Authority of Kansas City isn’t quite the national success story that its officials would like everyone to believe it is.

In the front room of Brown's apartment, cream-colored walls are covered with family photos in frames held together with Scotch tape. The coffee table is scattered with Housing Authority reports, newspaper clippings, a hardbound Women in the Bible and the latest issue of Time magazine. The other side of the room doubles as a kitchen, where faded paper stuck to the refrigerator reminds her "Don't tell God how big your storm is, instead tell your storm how big God is!"

Down a small hallway, there's a bathroom. Sometimes, Brown says, the toilet runs over and sends "poop water" gliding through the corridor. In the back is the bedroom, where she and Walter watch TV, read the newspaper and discuss whether they should set aside a little money to spend her 68th birthday on a casino boat.

Sometimes when they're trying to sleep, they can hear a baby playing on the floor upstairs. That doesn't bother Brown. She knows her unit is just one of 12 in this red-brick building.

Scattered around faded playground equipment and unkempt barbecue pits are 22 nearly identical buildings in the Chouteau Courts development. Each building has the same block shape, the same dim hallways with piss-yellow lights that swarm with flies, the same stairwells with paint chipping off the railings and rust staining the concrete steps.

Nearly 4,000 families are signed to a waiting list for public housing, yet more than a third of Chouteau's units are vacant. But Chouteau has the Housing Authority's highest number of residents receiving money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund, making it home to many children. It also pulls the smallest amount of rent from tenants, taking in just $11,600 from more than 85 leases in April.

At noon on a sunny spring day, residents regard one another with suspicion when they pass on the sidewalks. They're all low-income, but different circumstances brought them here. Many are unable to work because they are elderly or mentally or physically disabled. Others are young parents with low-wage jobs or people who need time to regroup after some sort of emergency.

This corner of Kansas City, just northeast of downtown, is home to the four largest developments managed by the Housing Authority of Kansas City. More than 1,000 public housing residents live less than a mile from Brown's front door, at the Riverview Gardens, Theron B. Watkins and Guinotte Manor projects. Those sites look better than some privately held apartment complexes. But 20 years ago, they were falling apart.

In 1988, a city audit found that the Housing Authority's then director, Ben Montijo, had lied about his work hours, submitted improper travel expenses and claimed $35,000 in unearned pay. He reportedly bought $300,000 worth of computer equipment that was never used. Meanwhile, the agency was in a budget crisis, and the developments were crime-ridden slums.