By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Directors of the Durham Housing Authority have hired a public-housing veteran with experience in New Jersey and the Midwest to become their organization's next chief executive officer.

The new hire, Dallas J. Parks, begins work Tuesday. He replaces Harrison Shannon, who announced his resignation in December but remains on the job.

Shannon will depart "a few weeks" after Parks takes over, DHA officials said in a news release announcing the hire.

The release quoted DHA Chairman Tom Niemann as saying Parks, former executive director of the Trenton, N.J., housing authority, "offers an excellent blend of management expertise and commitment to community service that will serve him well in Durham."

DHA officials also released a copy of Parks' resume. It shows he headed the Trenton authority from 2001 to 2007. Before that, he ran the Kansas City, Mo., housing authority from 1996 to 2001.

Reports in a New Jersey newspaper, the Trenton Times, say Parks stepped down from his job in that city in the summer of 2007, barely five months into a new three-year employment contract.

Parks, who turns 63 this July, said upon leaving the Trenton job that he planned to retire and would limit his professional activity to consulting, training and teaching.

He has in fact worked since as a consultant, in 2008 joining a Washington, D.C., firm, Quadel Consulting Corp.

There he has worked with the housing authorities in Memphis, Tenn., and Miami, Fla., that needed help administering their Section 8 rental voucher programs.

That was almost certainly a selling point for his new bosses, as DHA is still struggling to cope with backlogged file checks and other problems with its Section 8 program.

Parks in his resume also claims that he helped the Trenton authority improve its standing with regulators from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

There he inherited an agency HUD had "nearly designated as 'troubled' " for an assortment of management problems, and helped it earn solid ratings for four consecutive years.

Reports in the Trenton Times indicate that his tenure wasn't without controversy. They cited tenant complaints about maintenance, funding cuts dictated by the federal government and subsequent employee layoffs.

Parks worked more than a year without an employment contract, from December 2005 to February 2007, after his first deal with the Trenton board expired.

Shannon's career path before joining DHA in 2005 was similar to that of Parks.

He once ran the housing authority in Charlotte, but was forced out of that job in 2002. Between then and taking the Durham post, he too worked as a consultant.

Accounts varied as to whether Shannon's ouster in Charlotte was a power play by new board members or just desserts for management problems that included poor handling of Section 8 waiting lists.

Shannon's DHA contract had been due to expire in October. The problems here with Section 8 had raised questions about whether he would've been able to stay on.

Parks, despite his announced retirement plans, had been looking to get back into the game as a housing authority executive director. Last year he was a finalist for the top job at the housing authority in Cincinnati, Ohio.