Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > February > 15
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Bulldoze public housing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the great under-told stories of revolutionary change is the progress the Atlanta Housing Authority has made under Executive Director Renee Glover in ridding the city of those hell-hole public housing projects. Since 1995, 11 of 42 projects have been revitalized or converted into mixed-income, mixed-use complexes under the federal HOPE VI program, a failure in many places, but a real success here. Over the next few years, the AHA will bulldoze nearly all of the rest, razing 3,000 units occupied by 9,600 people.
Public housing, except for projects serving special-needs populations, like the elderly, are a great idea gone bad. Three-quarters of a century ago, when poor people lived in shantytown neighborhoods and lacked the job and education opportunities to get themselves out, project housing was a life-saver. One generation lived there but their children moved on. Over time, though, public housing became a generational affliction — children born there stayed to become mothers and grandmothers — a place that anchored them for the men to drop in and out of their lives. Some of the tenant leaders, meanwhile, became political powerhouses for their ability to deliver the vote. Bad scene.
The federal program offers vouchers to tenants to rent the housing they want elsewhere, in Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb. Or they may be readmitted, paying reduced taxpayer-subsidized rent, to the upscale, mixed-income apartment complex built to replace the one torn down. Good behavior is rewarded.
HOPE VI is one of the federal poverty programs that works. It breaks up the generational cycle of the massed poor, while giving them options and rewarding those who stay for choosing to live responsible lives. When my band of right-wingers take over, Renee Glover is a top candidate to the the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Services »
