As the top man at the Pittsburgh Housing Authority clears out his desk today, he leaves for his successor a daunting question:

Will the authority retain the special financial status it has had since 2000, or will it become subject to crippling budget cuts even as thousands of families wait for its assistance?

Executive Director Keith Kinard ends 11 years at the authority, including five in the top job, today. He'll next run the troubled Newark Housing Authority in New Jersey.

When he became executive director, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was investigating some $8 million in undocumented spending under predecessor Stanley Lowe.

"It was very tense, high-pressure," he said. "It didn't appear that many people trusted each other."

Mr. Kinard cleaned up the accounting and bidding procedures, said Gerald Voros, who was chairman of the authority's board through the end of last year.

"The result was that HUD has really become a supporter of Keith," he said.

"We had a good relationship with him," agreed John Carpenter, a HUD spokesman. "The housing authority made good progress under Mr. Kinard's tenure."

It has redeveloped the Bedford Dwellings community in the Hill District, replaced outmoded high-rises, and recently launched revamps of the St. Clair Village and Garfield Heights complexes. It has also upgraded social programs for young residents, opened arts centers and placed security cameras in high-crime communities.

Next up is a planned rebirth of the Hill District's Addison Terrace community, now home to 717 families. Mr. Kinard said the authority wants to turn it from an isolated, all-low-income complex into a mixed-income community integrated with nearby Centre Avenue.

That kind of activity costs money. The authority has done it against the backdrop of nationwide cuts in housing funding because it is one of around 40 public housing agencies nationwide involved in a special demonstration project called Moving to Work.

That project partially protects those authorities from cuts in their basic federal operating grants, and gives them increased flexibility in how they spend money. They can, for instance, use money slated for the Section 8 rent voucher programs instead for capital improvements or general operations, as Mr. Kinard did last year.

Unless HUD agrees to extend it, that designation expires at the end of this year, Mr. Kinard said.

New authority board Chairman Dennis Regan said the state's two U.S. senators are to meet today in Philadelphia with HUD to argue for protecting public housing funding, including Pittsburgh's special designation.

"I think we can make a good case, because under Keith, Pittsburgh's housing authority has done a great job," he said.

Mr. Carpenter said HUD could not comment on the authority's request for an extension of its special status.

The authority is supposed to get around $35 million from HUD for operations, said Mr. Kinard. Most of the rest of its $130 million budget comes from the federal Section 8 program, federal capital improvement grants and rent paid by residents.

Because of proposed across-the-board cuts in federal aid for housing agencies, the authority already expects to see its operations grant drop to $28 million next year. If its special designation is lost, it could get just $22 million, Mr. Kinard said.

"It's going to be a difficult challenge," he said. He said substantial layoffs could be necessary, even though he has gradually cut staff from around 780 to 460 over five years.

The authority may be able to lean on its savings account of around $28 million for a while, he said.

Increasing federal regulation requires the authority try to make sure that each of its varied communities balances its books, he added. That's difficult because some communities are composed mostly of senior citizens, who pay rent from their Social Security checks, while others are populated mostly by people with no income.

"We continue to have increased regulations thrown at us, along with reduced funding," he said.

The authority houses some 33,000 people, around one in every 10 city residents. About half are in public housing communities, and the rest receive vouchers to rent privately-owned houses or apartments.

That doesn't come close to meeting the needs of low-income Pittsburghers, Mr. Kinard said. There are around 1,500 families on the waiting list for public housing, and the list for Section 8 rent vouchers was around 4,500 names long before the authority stopped taking new applications early this year, he said.