Some tenants frowned on the deals, but the housing authority said federal and state housing officials cleared the arrangements for Matos, who lives in Dorrance’s former three-bedroom townhouse with a grassy yard, one of the nicer spots in public housing, and for two other managers, Alexandra Jimenez and Nyomi Peña-Hurley. Each earns around $50,000 a year, according to housing records, and pays $25 a month rent in exchange for running monthly crime watch meetings, monitoring the area, and working extra hours on public safety.

“That’s wrong,’’ said Thomas Connelly, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. “If they are in there, they should be paying the same rent as any other resident should be paying.’’

The Chelsea Housing Authority is the only public housing authority in the state known to give a housing manager an apartment and to charge almost no rent, according to federal and state housing officials. While low-income people are told they could wait up to two years for a subsidized apartment to become available, Matos and two other housing managers live in public housing units for just $300 per year under a program that authority officials say improves tenant safety.

But he was generous to inner-circle people such as Matos, whose former husband, James McNichols, is the authority accountant now under investigation for allegedly shredding work documents and authorizing more than $200,000 in questionable payments to McLaughlin on the day McLaughlin resigned.

Former housing director Michael E. McLaughlin, who resigned last month following news reports that he deliberately concealed his $360,000 pay package, liked to boast that he collected every penny of rent tenants owed, sending threatening letters for even small unpaid bills.

A Globe examination of court and housing records and interviews with current and former tenants found cases in which insiders received benefits at the expense of the low-income residents the housing authority was supposed to serve.

Matos’s takeover of the apartment - and the ability of her two adult children to obtain their own subsidized apartments - reflects what some residents say is a troubling pattern of unequal treatment.

“When I saw Jackie moving in there . . . that killed me,’’ said Dorrance, 46, who now lives in another city with her youngest child.

But Dorrance’s misfortune was a boon to the housing authority official who oversaw her eviction. Five days after a constable removed Dorrance’s belongings, Jacqueline Matos, a housing manager for the authority, moved into the vacant apartment. Matos still lives there, continuing to pay just $25 a month in rent, a small fraction of what Dorrance paid.

After a judge approved the eviction, Dorrance became homeless. It would be almost five years before she would again have a permanent address.

CHELSEA - Francine Dorrance, a single mother, was already broke, unemployed, and struggling to recover from a nervous breakdown in summer 2006 when the Chelsea Housing Authority moved to evict her over $276 in unpaid rent.

Judy Weber, the court-appointed temporary receiver now in charge of the authority, said that state and federal regulators approved the agreements for all three housing managers and that it was part of a practice that began in 2002. “It was a judgment made by the authority and the regulators at the time, and it was approved,’’ Weber said.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development confirmed that it approved a subsidized apartment for one Chelsea manager, but agency spokeswoman Mary-Leah Assad said officials are reviewing that decision.

Matos said she did not seek to evict Dorrance to take her apartment and pointed out that a Chelsea District Court judge approved the final eviction. Housing officials said Matos had asked for a different apartment, but was assigned to Dorrance’s.

“It’s a safety issue, and it’s good to have a housing manager on the property,’’ Matos said in an interview. “It just makes things better all around. Ever since I moved there, it’s been much more quiet.’’

Matos moved into Dorrance’s former apartment just as Matos was separating from her husband, according to court records, and at the time the couple owned a Billerica home that later sold for $289,000.

Matos’s two children later got their own apartments in public housing. Her son, Angel Ortiz, 28, stayed there until 2009, when he was charged with raping a 12-year-old girl in Northborough. The charge was initially dismissed in lower court, but a Worcester County grand jury indicted him this month on several charges related to the alleged crime, including child rape. He is to be arraigned next week in Worcester Superior Court.

Housing officials say Matos’s children applied and waited like everyone else, but the state said the Chelsea Housing Authority should have cleared it first with the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Meanwhile, several tenants say they lived under constant threat of eviction during McLaughlin’s 11-year tenure. One woman said the housing authority tried to throw her out after she discovered that officials had overcharged her $22,000. Another faced eviction for not paying a $173 extermination fee. An elderly woman was given three days to vacate a two-bedroom apartment because it was too big for her, sending her to the hospital in a panic.

Housing authorities are allowed to evict tenants over small debts, but, among lawyers who defend poor people facing eviction, Chelsea has a reputation for being particularly aggressive. Despite federal recommendations to housing officials to avoid evicting people over minor debts and to remember that their mission to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary’’ housing for low-income people, Chelsea has raised the threat of eviction over debts as small as $108.15.