Chicago Housing Authority Board Member’s Family Won Contracts

A longtime South Side housing activist appointed to the Chicago Housing Authority board oversaw a period in which her boyfriend and close family members reaped millions from contracts with the agency she helps govern.

Debra Parker, a former public housing resident tapped by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2018 as the first CHA commissioner to use a housing voucher, has ties to three cleaning companies that have collectively taken in nearly $22 million from the agency, according to a WBEZ investigation and reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The bulk of those payments came after Parker joined the board, though she said she had no role in awarding contracts and recused herself from votes involving her relatives’ firms.

Her boyfriend, Charles Bell, owns Parks and Bell Cleaning Company, a small janitorial business that once made just $30,000 a year. Since Parker joined the board, the company’s CHA payments have surged to more than $1.4 million annually, accounting for 98 percent of its revenue. Two other companies tied to Parker’s family — Ryan’s Cleaning Services, owned by her sister Angela Parker, and Lavi Decor and Cleaning Company, run by her daughter Lovie Diggs — have collected another $16 million from the housing authority since 2018.

Ryan’s Cleaning has been paid $15 million in total, with revenues peaking at $3.5 million in 2023 before dropping last year. Diggs’ newer firm has made more than $1 million since its 2020 launch, continuing to win CHA work even after Diggs’ 2023 guilty plea to a misdemeanor stemming from an identity theft case.

Parker, who still holds a Section 8 voucher, told WBEZ she obtained “ethics advice” about potential conflicts but wouldn’t share documentation.

“I have no direct authority,” she said. “Do they have a right to participate in contracts and opportunities in a free country? I think they do.”

The CHA declined to comment on the family’s business ties or on Parker’s role. The agency’s ethics policy warns that even the appearance of a conflict violates its rules.

The revelations surfaced as CHA faces broader scrutiny over insider relationships. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s stalled pick to lead the agency, former Alderman Walter Burnett, has himself come under fire for receiving CHA housing payments as a landlord.

— Eric Weilbacher