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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Dallas Morning News
Mar. 25--The tidy new brick homes around Bexar Street should be among the crown gems of southern Dallas redevelopment.
Instead, they've become symbols of a promising program that has largely come apart.
T.R. Hoover Community Development Corp., a nonprofit group that builds homes as part of an effort to revitalize the run-down neighborhood, is being investigated by the FBI over the possible misuse of federal grants, city documents show.
First-time home buyers who should have received down-payment money from T.R. Hoover are angry that they never got the help.
"I don't see how come they can still stay in business doing something like that," said Darryl Richards, one of the homeowners. "They'll get theirs down the road. God don't like that."
T.R. Hoover officials deny any improprieties. In a complaint to federal housing officials, they assert that the agency is being more closely scrutinized because it's led by African-American women.
The FBI's involvement marks the latest chapter in the tumultuous history of T.R. Hoover, once a favored partner in rebuilding the city's depressed southern half.
A top Dallas finance official left her job in January over what city officials call conflicts of interest involving her husband's work for the community group.
The Hoover experience helped prompt a far-reaching audit of Dallas' grant-compliance procedures.
And last fall, the city froze plans to give T.R. Hoover a $714,000 contract to develop Bexar Street's long-neglected commercial strip while auditors investigated the group's financial records.
"The city's decisions arose from T.R. Hoover's noncompliance, nonperformance and noncooperation under various contracts; apparent misallocation of thousands of federal dollars; and refusal to cooperate with the city in resolving these issues," Assistant City Attorney Scot Hughes wrote in a Jan. 20 letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That letter revealed the existence of the FBI probe. The inquiry also was confirmed...
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