DuPage Housing Authority director out
By Susan Frick Carlman scarlman@stmedianetwork.com August 29, 2012 12:03PM
Updated: August 30, 2012 4:09PM
Less than eight months after his first day on the job, David Hoicka has left the helm of the DuPage Housing Authority.
The agency, which administers Section 8 housing and provides other services for low-income residents, announced Wednesday morning that Hoicka no longer is its executive director.
Hoicka’s hiring, which capped off a 10-month search, came in the aftermath of a $10.1 million mismanagement scandal at the DHA that triggered the departure of its top staff and the resignation of its entire board, at the request of DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin. The misspending of federal housing funds, reporting errors and other problems at the DHA were revealed in a series of audits done by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which runs the Section 8 program.
Before coming to the Wheaton agency, Toronto native Hoicka was chief operating officer for the Housing Authority City of El Paso. He worked in several other positions in public housing as well. The DHA board hired him under a three-year contract that came with an annual salary of $125,000.
“The Board of Commissioners appreciates the work Mr. Hoicka accomplished with the Housing Authority and the strides that were made during his management of the agency,” the DHA said in a news release.
Additional information was not immediately available.
“I’m unable to speak to the matter,” said Mike Brosnahan of Naperville, who heads the DHA board’s finance committee. “We agreed that (board Chairman) Tom Good, as the press release indicated, would be the contact for the housing authority on this.”
Good, who in January said the board’s hiring of Hoicka would be “hard for anybody to question,” did not respond to several telephone messages left by The Sun.
Filling Hoicka’s position on an interim basis is Deb Darzinskis, who joined the DHA staff in June as a project administration specialist. Before coming to work at the authority, Darzinskis spent 14 years as associate executive director of Catholic Charities, under the Joliet diocese.
