John Hoffhines says his wife’s ex-husband is behind on child support payments because he works when he feels like it.

John West II doesn’t have to work much, Hoffhines said, because he’s living for free with his girlfriend at Edgewood Homes, a Lawrence Housing Authority-run apartment complex at East 16th Street and Haskell Avenue.

“I’ve complained about it,” he said. “But it doesn’t do any good.”

It’s especially galling, Hoffhines said, when his wife’s two sons spend the weekend with their father at Edgewood Homes.

“Here I am, paying for his kids, and there he is living in an apartment that I  as a taxpayer  am paying for,” Hoffhines said. “That’s not right. He shouldn’t be able to do that.”

Hoffhines, 44, said he gave up on the housing authority doing anything about it after someone there told him to put his concerns in a letter to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regional office in Kansas City.

“They wanted me to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop,” he said. And he gave up trying to get West booted from Edgewood Homes.

Was it fair?

Then Hoffhines read a July 26 story in the Journal-World about the housing authority evicting Stacie McClelland, a 21-year-old single mother with two small children, after it became apparent the man charged in a nearby double slaying had been staying in her apartment.

“I don’t think that was fair,” Hoffhines said. “They shouldn’t have kicked her out if they’re not going to kick him (West) out.”

Damien C. Lewis, 22, was arrested July 17 at McClelland’s Edgewood Homes apartment on charges stemming from an armed robbery in nearby Edgewood Park.

After the arrest, McClelland called police to report finding items in Lewis’ belongings apparently taken from Pete Wallace and Wyona Chandlee, an elderly couple slain during a July 10 burglary at their home at 1530 Learnard Ave.

Lewis later was charged in the deaths of Wallace and Chandlee. He is being held in Douglas County Jail.

A week after Lewis’ arrest, McClelland was given a 30-day eviction notice because she’d let someone who wasn’t named on her lease stay with her. She has until Aug. 31 to move out.

Hoffhines said he had never met McClelland.

Name on the mailbox

West told the Journal-World he did not live at Edgewood Homes, despite the fact his name appears on the mailbox outside Apt. 139 and that his children spend weekends there occasionally. He said he just happened to be visiting the apartment when the Journal-World went looking for him.

“I don’t live here,” he said, noting that he often sleeps in a camper at Clinton Lake. He also spends time at his mother’s home in Tecumseh.

“I’m not at one place more than a day or two,” he said.

West, 53, also insisted he wasn’t behind in his child support, though court records show he’s almost $3,000 in arrears.

“This is a case of harassment, that’s what this is,” he said.

West said he and Apt. 139 leasee Frances Carter are “just friends. We get together and drink coffee, that’s all.”

And it’s not true, he said, that he only works when he feels like it. “I drive a bus up at KU, so when the (students) aren’t there I’m on unemployment,” he said. “I go back to work in a couple weeks.”

Carter, too, said she and West were just friends.

“That Johnny Hoffhines is crazy,” she said. “He just can’t leave John alone.”

Could be fraud

At Edgewood Homes, Lawrence Housing Authority executive director Barbara Huppee promised a prompt investigation of Hoffhines’ complaint.

“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” she said last week.

Though complaints about people living “off the lease” are not unusual, Huppee said they all were taken seriously.

In the private sector, she said, most landlords don’t care if a tenant switches or adds a roommate, but at Edgewood Homes a tenant’s eligibility to live there is based on household income. So when another person  and that person’s income Âmoves in, eligibility is likely to change.

“If the income in a household is not what’s been declared, then that’s fraud,” Huppee said.

Though Huppee declined to discuss Carter’s lease, she said procedures called for a tenant being reminded of the rules prohibiting off-the-lease tenants. A second infraction, she said, would lead to eviction.

“The process is complicated because whatever we do has to be able to stand up in court, so there’s a lot of sorting out as to what’s sustainable and what’s unsustainable,” she said. “It could take six months.”

McClelland not warned

Huppee said McClelland wasn’t warned before she was evicted because the lease clearly states that leasees are responsible for their guests’ and dependents’ actions on Edgewood Homes property. And when those actions involve violence  on or off the premises  tenants are not entitled to a warning.

“We’re ‘one strike’ on that,” Huppee said.

Huppee said she had no way of knowing how many Edgewood Homes tenants were putting up off-the-lease guests.

“I doubt that it’s more than 10 percent,” she said. Edgewood Homes has 130 apartment units and averages about 325 tenants at any time, Huppee said.

Sooner or later, she said, most are caught, noting that evictions are commonplace.

“Some months there may not be any,” she said. “Other months we’ve had as many as nine, and it’s not just for live-ins. It may be because they’re not paying their rent or they’ve caused a disturbance.”

Huppee doesn’t apologize for her willingness to evict.

“We have a saying around here: You get the behavior you allow.”