South Tucson’s messy housing headaches

A pair of heavy rocks prop open the gate in the security fence wrapping around the South Tucson municipal complex before every council meeting.

The doors automatically lock when closed, so the rocks keep the meeting open to the public.

There is nothing special about these rocks, but they are a good example of how the square-mile city has long found low-tech, inexpensive solutions to keep the local government running on a tiny budget.

And as South Tucson residents begin voting in the upcoming city council election, that shoestring local government is turning on itself.

A tenants union wants the director of the city’s public housing agency fired, the council has opened an investigation into her, and the vice mayor claims two of her council colleagues are working behind the scenes to push the director out.

But the council can’t actually fire the housing director — only the city manager can — which puts the city manager, already crosswise with the council over a controversial cell tower, in the crosshairs too.

The South Tucson Tenants Union’s case against Irma Gonzalez, director of the South Tucson Housing Authority, includes allegations that she failed to communicate with tenants about major repairs, refused to adequately address critical health hazards and hired relatives to work at the housing complex funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The complaints against Gonzalez include allegations that she didn’t give enough notice about replacing the sole elevator in a three-story building owned by the housing authority. The elevator replacement took a little more than three weeks, and many of the building’s residents are elderly or have disabilities.

Officials say they made accommodations as best they could with their anemic budget, but the housing authority is not as flush with cash as it was during COVID.

Another tenant told the union that their air conditioning was not fixed in a timely manner, although a city official later confirmed the tenant was given portable units until the repairs were complete.

And to be clear, the city hasn’t been doing great on its public housing.

HUD’s 2024 database listed the South Tucson Housing Authority as having “substandard management,” the latest indication of the housing authority’s longstanding struggles to meet federal housing standards.

But Gonzalez has only been the director for two years, and those poor marks from HUD effectively predate her term. Technically, the housing authority got 69 points on a 100-point scale, or about a D+ grade.

Supporters of the housing director and the tenants union are touting competing petitions signed by public housing tenants. One of those petitions urges the council to fire Gonzalez. The other expresses support for keeping her on the job.

But those petitions are also being quietly questioned, as some wonder whether individual residents understood what they were signing or were pressured to sign them.

Glenda Avalos, a member of the South Tucson Tenants Union, says that people were asked to sign a petition supporting Gonzalez while they were paying rent last weekend, which she argues is intimidating. City officials note those signatures — which were presented to the council Tuesday night — were collected by residents who support the housing director, not city staff.

We’ve reviewed text messages and photos of a flier targeting Gonzalez, as well as statements made during call to the public at the last two council meetings. There are also posters going up in the neighborhood where Gonzalez lives, well outside the city’s square-mile limits, saying she was mistreating tenants.

But here’s where it becomes political.

All this housing brouhaha is happening just as council members Cesar Aguirre and Brian Flagg are running for re-election. (Mayor Roxanna Valenzuela got enough votes during the primary this summer to secure another term.)

The trio is part of a progressive bloc that got elected to the council by promising to fight gentrification. And they’re all activists tied to Casa Maria, a nonprofit soup kitchen that has started buying properties in South Tucson to turn into affordable housing.

But critics say their growing influence has raised questions about conflicts of interest, transparency and the boundary between a private nonprofit and a municipal government.

Essentially, South Tucson elected a slate of housing activists to protect its poorest residents. But now those activists are facing demands to fire the people responsible for housing those residents, potentially destabilizing an already fragile municipal government.

Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Melissa Brown-Dominguez said she has a recorded phone call of Aguirre and Valenzuela working with the tenants union while conspiring to fire Gonzalez.

Valenzuela told us she has met with the union, but said she told them to bring their concerns to Gonzalez and the city manager.

The council has launched an investigation into Gonzalez, and the union is pressuring the council to move fast. One insider said a special meeting could be called for this month to give the council an update on the investigation.

But under the city charter, the council can’t fire Gonzalez. Only City Manager Veronica Moreno can hire, discipline or fire the housing authority staff. The council can fire Moreno, though, and some people want it to. (That chain of command also puts a wrinkle in the claims that Gonzalez is directly hiring family members.)

South Tucson resident Bryan Sanders, who made national headlines after being punched while protesting at a Donald Trump rally in 2016, said the council needs to take more drastic action.

He wants the council to fire both Gonzalez and Moreno, as well as the new city attorney, saying the bureaucracy is not serving South Tucson residents.

Sanders isn’t a lone voice, either.

Many on the council already were upset with Moreno for signing off on a building permit for a 70-foot cell tower that’s about as controversial in South Tucson as data centers are in Tucson.

Council members appeared frustrated with City Attorney Michelle Stinson on Tuesday — who recently assumed the position — over her explanation of a legal recommendation that officials sign off on the controversial permit.

South Tucson’s contract is actually with the law firm Pierce Coleman, PLLC, not a single individual. (Nor is city attorney an elected position in South Tucson.) But the council recently forced the firm to change lawyers, as a council majority disagreed with then-City Attorney Jon Paladini’s initial assessment of what the council could do about the proposed cell tower.

This isn’t the only issue facing South Tucson.

Others include dwindling police staffing, with the city offering the lowest base pay in the area; potential budget shortfalls exacerbated by eliminating its sales tax on groceries; and complicated agreement to have Rural Metro take over some calls after dissolving the fire department.

So what’s next? There is another council meeting on the third Tuesday of the month.

And an election next month that could shift the power dynamic on the South Tucson City Council.

And while the rocks will still be propping up the gates outside South Tucson City Hall, the question is whether the people who put them there will be.