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Friday, July 25, 2008
Atlanta’s public housing revamp shows real hope for the future
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of America’s great success stories is here in Atlanta.
For those who believe that the alternative to cradle-to-grave dependency on government is to give individuals incentive to make responsible choices, Atlanta is a conservative’s dream.
Atlanta? Yes — in one sterling instance: public housing.
What the Atlanta Housing Authority has done, executive director Renee Glover specifically, is the road map for conservatives eager to reverse the inevitable slide to dependency. Essentially it involves razing the complexes that anchored generation after generation of vulnerable women for the convenience of the predators who passed through their lives. That was never the intent when the nation’s first public housing project, Techwood Homes, was constructed here in 1936. Sadly, that is what large-scale public housing projects became.
With federal demolition permits now granted, Atlanta will become the first major city in America to rid itself of large public housing projects for families.
The AHA was the nation’s fifth-largest public housing agency, in shambles, one of America’s worst and in danger of federal takeover, when the first signs of turnaround came with the appointment of hard-nosed director Sam Hider almost 30 years ago. At the time, AHA was landlord for 50,000 people housed in 20,000 units in 42 complexes spread throughout the city. Twice as many residents lived there for more than 10 years as had lived there for less than one.
Hider, who died in 2003, began to change the agency — and the culture during his 10-year tenure. In the year before he came, the AHA paid tenants to lobby the Georgia General Assembly for more money and actually sponsored and funded a reception for legislators.
It was under Glover, though, that the real revolution occurred — prompted by a federal program called HOPE VI, launched in 1992. Significantly, it encourages replacement of project housing with vouchers and with mixed-income redevelopment. Nationally, the record is mixed; President Bush has tried repeatedly to cut it out of the budget. In some cases, the crime previously concentrated in projects is shuttled elsewhere.
Glover, an attorney, initially came as an appointee to the AHA board in 1991. After a series of unsuccessful directors, she took the job in 1994.
“Atlanta for decades had seen and experienced the terrible byproducts of concentrating families in poverty,” she said. That meant “higher rates of crime, poor school performance, severe disinvestment in neighborhoods, failing neighborhood schools and institutionalization of families into multigenerational poverty.”
One aim of HOPE VI was to break the cycle. It involved giving project-dwellers vouchers to rent elsewhere, razing hellholes where they had been cooped out of the mainstream so long that they either never learned, or had forgotten, how to function. In short — and this is the lesson and the danger of a growing dependency on government — they had been trained to passivity and failure.
That’s been the problem nationally. As Glover notes, “while tearing down the housing projects and creating healthy mixed-use, mixed-income communities is the right strategy for the real estate, it is only half the equation. The neighborhood schools and other quality-of-life amenities must be addressed.”
This gets now to the second lesson for conservatives who wish to change public education, health care, Social Security and other government programs that invite dependency. It took decades to cultivate full dependency and after that, passivity, to train them out of the values and the behaviors that moved the next generation upward. Simply moving them out of public housing projects, while essential, is only the beginning.
Glover has been steadfast in insisting, as HOPE VI envisioned, that former residents “buy” their way back into attractive mixed-use communities by changing their behaviors, by taking responsibility for maintaining decent, crime-free apartments.
It’s a long, slow process. Decades. It’s not cheaper. It doesn’t “save” money. As with welfare reform, it costs more. But the goal, ultimately, is to train people to survive, to teach them self-reliance and to accept responsibility for their family’s well-being. That’s revolutionary, but slow. The conservative approach to buy us out of the dependency behaviors that government programs buy us into. Give us information and choice, and then encourage us to act in our own and our family’s best interest.
Leaders matter. Without them, it’s just money thrown to the winds.
HOPE IV hasn’t worked everywhere. But it has in Atlanta.
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VP picks, a classy lawyer, fried pies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Nobody will let me have my first choice as vice president on the John McCain ticket. That’d be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Or, probably, my second, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. His is a small state certain to vote Republican anyway. But I’ll settle for third: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a conservative who was sworn in and promptly called a special session to enact ethics legislation. Like Barack Obama, he’s too unseasoned to be president just now, but he’d season as VP.
Little-noticed changes that matter a great deal build the Sonny Perdue legacy. A prime example is the Georgia Technology Authority’s plan to contract with private-sector vendors to operate computer systems for 11 agencies. About 500 state workers will move to the private sector and about 200 jobs will be eliminated. Technology changes too quickly for government procurement. And, too, why hire the excess help needed for emergencies when the private sector can provide three or 300 when needed? Great move.
Don’t retire the odd-even watering police just yet. China deals with its Olympics-related traffic problems by ordering odd-even driving days. Why add road capacity when you can simply order drivers off the road?
When a public official, tasked with responsibility to reduce payroll by 2.5 percent, announces that 53 police and 27 fire vacancies won’t be filled, as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin did, you gotta believe it’s a game. To be cut, too, are 20 public defender jobs and 13 in the solicitor’s office. When I’m asked to cut my budget by 2.5 percent, I propose not paying the water bill, the gas bill and parking the car I drive to work.
A nation cannot be safe from terrorism if its people think asking them a security-related question is an outrage, or worse, a reason to sue. This is what passes for a major revelation in today’s politically correct, touchy-feely world: From The Associated Press, this first paragraph: “The Justice Department’s former top criminal prosecutor says the government’s terror watch list has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled.” Goodness gracious. Can this nation survive in a world where people really are trying to kill us?
We really are becoming a nation where the elite in academia and the media are guerrillas determined to destroy corporations they don’t like —- tobacco, insurance, “predatory” lenders and oil, for example. An example is a report from Harvard researchers purporting to show that tobacco companies have “manipulated” menthol levels in cigarettes to keep customers. Imagine the crime of that. Any chance that manufacturers in any other industries might have “manipulated” other products —- say coffee or other beverages or the accessories in automobiles —- to keep customers? In this country we criminalize and demonize what we don’t like and employ unexamined buzzwords, like “smart-growth,” for things we do.
The state gets a single bid —- about $3 million less than it paid —- for a six-acre tract near Atlantic Station. What to do? Wait for full value. No commission required for this wealth-building advice.
Atlanta lawyer Randy Evans, friend and counselor to Newt Gingrich and a number of other high-profile political figures, is a class act. When the former Bush administration press secretary died, Evans created the Tony Snow Family Trust at the Wachovia bank in Bowie, Md., to help cover education and other expenses for Tony and Jill Snow’s three children. Donations can be made to: Center for Health Transformation, Attn: Tony Snow Family Trust, 1425 K Street N.W., Washington, DC 20005. At his death, Snow was working through the center on a cancer project with former Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro.
Blaming Southern foods and “metro Atlanta’s car-crazy culture” for obesity is the same as blaming guns for crime. The CDC finds the South to be the nation’s fattest region. People make choices. They are responsible. Not the fried chicken, gravy, fried pies or biscuits. How long will it be before some do-gooder suggests shutting down all-you-can-eat buffets?
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