BARRY PLANS TO CREATE SEPARATE PUBLIC HOUSING DEPARTMENT

Mayor Marion Barry said yesterday he had decided to create a separate department to operate the District's troubled public housing and will appoint an internal task force next week to begin work on a reorganization plan.

Barry, who is seeking a third term in the Nov. 4 election, said that next to drugs and crime, improving the public housing that shelters 60,000 residents has been the most difficult problem he has faced.

"I want to make public housing a high priority and make it more manageable," Barry said. "I haven't been on top of this, and I take full responsibility for all the problems. I'm on top of it now."

The District's public housing, now under the jurisdiction of the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, has been designated by the federal government as one of 19 financially and operationally troubled housing authorities in the country.

Six months ago, Secretary Samuel R. Pierce of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development assigned one of his top assistants to work directly with the District to attempt to correct the most serious problems cited in numerous federal audits. A HUD task force issued a report in July saying that D.C. public housing expenditures were out of control and recommending that a board of commissioners be appointed to run public housing.

James Baugh, HUD's acting assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, who has headed the task force, said in an interview this week that the city has an "inordinate number" of occupied units that do not meet housing code standards because of a lack of accountability in maintenance, the "heart" of the public housing operation.

Despite a nationwide search, the city's public housing operation has been without a permanent director since June 1985. Baugh said some of the top professionals in the field had expressed concerns to him about taking the job because public housing here has become "so political" and is beset by massive problems.

Barry said yesterday that a city plan for corrective action already is in operation. He noted that the city had stepped up its repair of vacant public housing units and is revamping its management system. He said that he had selected 35 people to serve on a task force to address such issues as financial management, rent collection and warehouse inventory.

In June, one of Barry's plans for improvement -- evicting illegal public housing tenants -- met strong opposition from housing advocacy groups that argued that the city had failed to maintain its housing units and now wants to blame the victims.

Barry also said he believes that the city needs to take a part in changing attitudes of some tenants. "We are going to turn around this welfare mentality that the city owes people all this housing," he said.". . . We have some families that are three generations in public housing, and we are going to break that cycle."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.