Gene Jones, the new TCHC boss, used to go on nighttime drug raids

The Toronto Community Housing Corporation has been muddling along without a permanent CEO since Keiko Nakamura was fired last year, but the scandal-ridden agency has finally found its guy. And he sounds pretty awesome. Not only does American Gene Jones sport a cool moustache, he has also cleaned up several troubled social housing agencies across the U.S., most recently the Detroit Housing Commission. And, in a Q&A with the Toronto Star, Jones explained that, when he was director of the Indianapolis Housing Agency, he’d suit up in a flak jacket and accompany police on middle-of-the-night drug raids to experience a neighbourhood’s crime dynamic firsthand. Even the $750-million repair backlog and mass firings at the TCHC don’t faze him. Jones told the Globe and Mail that the shenanigans outlined in the Auditor General’s reports were “typical” in the U.S., “so there’s nothing here that they’ve done that I haven’t seen being done.”

• TCHC reaches across border to pick a new CEO [Toronto Star]
• New public housing boss readies himself to clean up after turbulent year [Globe and Mail]