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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Vick, terrorists — and, yes, good news
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Amid the gloomy news of the day — Atlanta Falcon quarterback Michael Vick is indicted for alleged involvement in dog fighting, al-Qaida intensifies its efforts to strike inside the U.S., and the poor illegals in Metro Atlanta are having a tough time registering their cars — there is exceedingly good news.
It comes from Renee Glover, executive director of the Atlanta Housing Authority. On Tuesday, she delivered the good news to residents of the Englewood Manor public housing project near Zoo Atlanta. The project will be razed and most of its residents will be given federal Housing Choice vouchers that will allow them to rent private sector housing anywhere in the U.S. One resident interviewed by AJC reporter Ernie Suggs, a 32-year-old mother of two, said she did something last week she never thought she’d do in her life: She went apartment hunting. “I went to look at a couple of condos and apartments in Norcross,” she said. “It was great.”
The woman, Markisha Brice, moved into Englewood 18 months ago from Cincinnati, where she’d lived in public housing since 1991, the year her first daughter was born. “I always wanted the comfort of my own home,” she told Suggs. “Now I am going to get it.”
Under Glover, Atlanta is a national leader in ridding communities of those awful public housing projects, where one generation of tenants begets another, all conditioned to lifetime dependency on government.
To qualify for Housing Choice vouchers, residents must have a job, pay their rent on time, and resolve past problems with credit, criminal history and unpaid utility bills. About 82 percent of the 300 families in Englewood will qualify. Taxpayers pay moving expenses, apartment deposits, up to three apartment applications, and for 27 months of support services. Eventually, all 12 remaining public housing projects in Atlanta will be torn down and rebuilt as mixed-income developments, with some units available to the poor and some to those who pay full freight.
This program is an example of how conservatives can change the world, while making life better for the poor. Obviously sitting for a lifetime in a cracker-box in a crime-ridden public housing project surrounded by misery cultivates dependency. It costs more initially to give residents a chance to live in a setting where people get up and go to work every day and assume personal responsibility for their lives and families, but over time the money will be well spent.
