The Tampa Housing Authority wants to buy the property located at W. Cypress in Tampa for its new offices.

TAMPA - Leaders of the local agency charged with housing the poor say they've outgrown their headquarters and want to buy a newer building for $4 million.

The Tampa Housing Authority board will vote Wednesday on whether to move out of its administrative buildings in the midst of the North Boulevard Homes, one of the older housing projects in the city, to a 25-year-old building on the edge of the Westshore business district.

The move would give the authority more than 20,000 additional square feet of office space over the 45,000 total they have in three buildings at North Boulevard Homes.

The proposal, however, puts the housing authority at odds with Mayor Pam Iorio, who considers it a waste of money. Iorio said she has expressed her displeasure to the authority president and several members of the agency's board of commissioners.

"Their mission is very clear: to provide public housing for the poor," Iorio said. "They do not need a new office."

Iorio has no veto power over the seven housing commissioners, all of whom she appointed. The board has scheduled a vote for Wednesday to finalize the contract on the 67,824-square foot building at 5301 W. Cypress Street.

Authority officials say they need the space to better manage a sprawling affordable housing operation that has outgrown its old image of dreary redbrick "projects."

The agency now manages thousands of subsidized rental units that rival many of the best market-rate apartments in the city, said housing authority president and chief executive officer, Jerome Ryans.

"This building has outlived its usefulness," Ryans said. "It's not big enough. We're expanding; we're a fairly large organization now."

More than 4,000 people come through the doors of the gray brick headquarters building at 1529 W. Main St. each month.

Ryans said many of the 235 employees are doubled up in single-person offices and there is no privacy for meetings with clients and vendors. On-site parking is mostly reserved for employees, with few spaces available for visitors.

'It's a cracker box," he said.

Still, the timing of the move is proving controversial during an economic downturn that has thrown tens of thousands of local residents onto jobless roles, many of whom have lost homes to foreclosure.

The housing authority has 12,000 applicants on waiting lists for Section 8 rental vouchers or public housing units. The number of families getting vouchers has increased from 2,400 to 5,400 since Ryans took over 12 years ago.

"It should not be a priority of (the authority) when there is a waiting list for housing," Iorio said of the building. "It's not necessary."

Iorio, who has had to lay off 235 city employees since 2007 to deal with declining tax revenues, said the housing authority failed to adequately explore options, including using vacant space in some city-owned buildings.

Ryans said the amount of vacant space offered by the city didn't meet the authority's needs. Plus, he wants to unite employees, who are now scattered among the main headquarters and two other buildings, under one roof.

The housing authority has been looking for a new headquarters building for 10 years, said chief operating officer Leroy Moore. During that time, the authority pumped as much money as possible into renovating public housing stock or tearing down crime-ridden projects and replacing them with attractive apartments.

Moore said the authority finally decided to pull the trigger on buying a building after real estate values tanked.

Officials were able to negotiate a $4 million price for the Cypress Street building -- $600,000 less than a recent appraisal, Moore said. Four years ago, at the height of the real estate boom, the building changed hands for $6 million.

Money for the purchase would come from two sources, neither of which Ryans or Moore classify as housing funds:

•$2.5 million from money earned by the authority's non-profit subsidiary, the North Tampa Housing Development Corp. The non-profit is paid by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to administer HUD's Section 8 contracts with 454 participating apartment managers around Florida.

•$1.7 million, which would include $200,000 in closing costs -- from a 7 percent fee HUD pays the authority to handle Section 8 vouchers that are given to eligible individual clients. Moore said if the authority can administer the program for less than 7 percent, it gets to bank "retained earnings."

"So if we operate the program efficiently, we may only spend 5 percent, so the remaining 2 percent is profit over expenses," Moore said.

At least one housing authority board member doesn't buy that fine distinction.

"It's not our money, it's the taxpayers' money," said Rubin Padgett, the only commissioner to raise substantial questions about purchasing the building when it was discussed at the Nov. 17 board meeting.

Padgett complained that Ryans and Moore had not briefed board members on which housing authority employees would move into the new headquarters how much it would cost to renovate the building, which was built in 1985, he said.

"I'm talking about questions that we as board members should know the answer to -- the money we're spending," Padgett said at the meeting. "Sure, there may be $600,000 savings, but we don't know what it's going to cost us in the future."

Moore said the authority would have to spend just shy of $1 million to renovate the new building.

Other board members could not be reached or declined to comment.

Ryans said he respects the mayor's opinion despite differing with her on the building.

"She was a major player in how we got things done," Ryans said. "She's been a super supporter of ours for years."

Mike Salinero

(813) 259-8303