Guards at PHA senior communities say their checks are late and hard to cash

Guards who receive visitors and help assure residents’ safety at some of Philadelphia Housing Authority senior public-housing communities looked forward to significant wage hikes last fall.

Pay for a group of armed staffers contracted to provide security rose to $18 an hour, from $13.50; unarmed guards rose to $14.40, from $10.25, guards say.

But relief at better pay changed to chagrin when the paychecks from one of the three contractors employing the guards, Sovereign Security, began bouncing in the weeks after the boost.

Paydays, formerly Friday at the end of each week, shifted forward three days to the following Monday. The company often failed to meet even that later schedule, leaving guards without pay to cover bills, and hit by penalties from their own banks and credit unions, guards say.

“The paychecks started getting late, and then they bounced,” said John Crawford, who works the front desk at the Nellie Reynolds Gardens, a PHA apartment building on West Glenwood Avenue in North Philadelphia.

Sovereign is one of a handful of mostly locally owned guard agencies that draw much of their business from city agencies such as PHA. Its owner, Richard Cottom, is a former Drexel University public-safety official who has said he’d like to build a national agency.

Cottom did not respond to calls, messages left with staff, or a visit to the building that houses his Center City office.

Crawford provided records of Sovereign checks returned for insufficient funds in December, January, March and May, along with bad-check fees — $35 per incident at the Transit Workers credit union, $15 per incident at Police and Fire.

Crawford said Sovereign eventually reimbursed the bounced-check fees, but his Philadelphia-based credit unions will no longer accept Sovereign checks. He has to have them cashed at the bank Sovereign draws the checks on, United Bank of Philadelphia, when funds are available in Sovereign’s payroll accounts. Two weeks ago, their employer warned guards not to deposit or cash checks until Thursday, four days after payday, he and other workers said.

“No check-cashing place in Philadelphia will accept these checks,” said Richard Chapman, who works at PHA’s Wilson Park project on Jackson Street in South Philadelphia.

He said United Bank’s two offices close before he gets off shift, so most days he can’t cash his paycheck there. Fortunately a credit union where he has an account still accepts the checks for deposit.

The late and bounced checks started in September for Ron Jones, who also works at Wilson Park. “The first few times, you take it as it might be an aberrant going-on. But I haven’t seen any remorse or understanding of what we have to go through” from supervisors, he added.

Jones said he lost his health insurance, which he bought independently of the job, when three straight Sovereign paychecks were late and he failed to meet his quarterly premium, which he now owes along with a reinstatement fee.

Wells Fargo Bank froze his account after a paycheck bounced late last fall. “We had a tough Christmas,” Jones said.

It’s made for tension with his housemates: “I’ve had to borrow for carfare and to get something to eat, like I was a homeless person,” he said. “Every week, we hope and pray. This isn’t right.”

PHA is aware of the problem, said Nichole L. Tillman, executive vice president at the agency, which maintains its own police department, in addition to the 57 shifts worked by contracted guards from private firms, who she said are stationed at senior housing locations.

After workers complained of delayed checks, “at Sovereign’s request, PHA even paid [Sovereign] earlier than the 45-day term in their contract to help them with late-payment issues,” though “it is the contractor’s responsibility” to pay employees on time, Tillman said.

Current and former Sovereign staff said the agency had a tough time staffing positions after workers experienced late and bounced paychecks. The guards say younger colleagues working for Sovereign at PHA have quit rather than wait for late pay.

Since check delays began last fall, guards say Sovereign has given up staffing PHA’s Emlen Arms Apartments in Mount Airy, Germantown House and the Warnock Village senior building in Germantown, the senior buildings at Wilson Park, and Suffolk Manor in Olney. The guards were also withdrawn from West Park in West Philadelphia, which PHA closed, under a plan to redevelop the aging site.

Sovereign was also replaced as a guard supplier to the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works. PGW officials said AlliedUniversal, the largest U.S. private security firm, with headquarters in California and Conshohocken, in past years used Sovereign to supply guards as a subcontractor. Last year, AlliedUniversal’s successor, Harvard Protection Services, replaced Sovereign with another firm, according to PGW spokesman Dan Gross, who said he was unaware of the reason for the switch.

Tillman said PHA hadn’t fired Sovereign due to guard payment issues, adding only that “reassignments are made because of performance concerns,” and typically follow tenant complaints, for example when staff don’t arrive on schedule.

“You can’t play with people’s money,” said Crawford, the guard at the North Philly site, as he greeted and bantered with elderly residents heading through the Reynolds apartments’ sunny lobby to the benches out front on a recent morning. “They want to pay us when they pay us. But we still have to come to work every morning.”