Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > July > 25 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USAtlanta’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.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Comments
By catlady
July 28, 2008 9:21 AM | Link to this
Much of what Glover has done I agree with. And I agree it is a slow process. Ask the folks in Clayton and other “receiving” counties how much they like the program, however. They feel that Atlanta has just exported their problems out of town and onto them.
I’d love to see an AJC followup, unbiased, on the fate of those who lost their “homes” from HOPe IV. Surely they have been tracked??
By catlady
July 28, 2008 9:26 AM | Link to this
Much of what Glover has done I agree with. And I agree it is a slow process. Ask the folks in Clayton and other “receiving” counties how much they like the program, however. They feel that Atlanta has just exported their problems out of town and onto them.
I’d love to see an AJC followup, unbiased, on the fate of those who lost their “homes” from HOPe IV. Surely they have been tracked??
By catlady
July 28, 2008 9:28 AM | Link to this
Much of what Glover has done I agree with. And I agree it is a slow process. Ask the folks in Clayton and other “receiving” counties how much they like the program, however. They feel that Atlanta has just exported their problems out of town and onto them.
I’d love to see an AJC followup, unbiased, on the fate of those who lost their “homes” from HOPe IV. Surely they have been tracked??
By Corey
July 28, 2008 9:50 AM | Link to this
Catlady, they have tracked them; most of them find housing in the city of Atlanta. Clayton being the dumping ground is mostly hype. You can look it up at the Atlanta Housing Authority if you don’t believe me.
By Tina Trent
July 28, 2008 9:56 AM | Link to this
Can’t argue with Glover’s success. In fact, we need ten of her. But the Section 8 vouchers hit the most vulnerable RESPONSIBLE communities of homeowners — these people don’t end up in Druid Hills and Virginia Highlands, where high profile defense attorneys and elite activists happily raise their families in luxury neighborhoods, much as I’d love to see that outcome.
Sure, give me a bunch of elderly women on Section 8 who raised their families, worked hard, and want and deserve to live in a safe neighborhood — but what we got, at direct cost to my pocket, safety and peace of mind — was households where the police came five days a week, where the kids graduated only from fist-fights to break-ins, to knives and then guns despite our every (not insignificant) effort to tutor and feed and help them, and where slumlords with guaranteed, above-market rent checks from the government were less accountable to the neighborhood because HUD has special protections in place that give Section 8 recipients special rights that ordinary people who pay their own rent don’t possess. So no matter what these people do to you — beat your neighbor, shoot up the streets, steal cars, break into houses, pimp and prostitute on the corner, not marry the men who flop with them and father their five kids so they can keep collecting the checks (all of which, and more, happened within a block of me, documentable to Section 8 households in the neighborhood), you can’t even get them evicted because they’re Section 8. That’s not a solution, Jim. The solution is to take away their vouchers if crime occurs at the household, and start checking these homes for “unattached” male residents who turn out to be daddy. Just like they started doing in the projects. Why does nobody do that? Or enforce it? The Section 8 households in my neighborhood made living there a living hell, cost us all a bundle, and reduced the hard-earned value of my house. But at least the city boosters in three thousand dollar suits didn’t have to personally, briefly, witness the carnage anymore as they motored their Lexuses from Buckhead to the business district downtown. Lucky them.
By catlady
July 28, 2008 10:21 AM | Link to this
Thanks, Corey.
Tina, I did not know that those receiving Section 8 taxpayer subsidies were not held accountable for their activities.
Sounds like, as with the current mortgage mess, the collateral casualties are too high. It seems quite wrong to me that neighbors of those getting those high rate mortgages should have to suffer, and have no bailout or recourse, when the recepients default and leave the neighborhood a wasteland of empty houses.
Too many times, when laws are put in place, they reward poor behavior and bad choices over and over again.
By Yarrum
July 28, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this
There is a requirement for annual criminal background checks, and a clean record is required to continue receiving assistance. Do your homework.
By Big John
July 28, 2008 3:11 PM | Link to this
Tina Trent, I do sympathize with your tale, I moved to North Fulton County back five years ago, at first I rented (extremely high priced) the property required qualified tenants to have a background checks, and had a ‘no tolerance’ rule on violators……Then Katrina happened…The government vouched animals poured into any available units that the complex had available. What’s more, the complex by law had to let them in and was told by the FEMA or whoever that we could not be notified when they did so. The crime rate went sky high until they all finally left, then believe it or not the section 8 bunch started showing up…I have since moved and trust me it bore into me to buy into a gated club type community with a strict convenience. That is the only legal way to keep the trash at bay. I now happily live in an ethically diverse community built from people all over the world, but in this we have a common ground in that we are all hard working professionals and that is the way we like it.
By SN
July 28, 2008 5:11 PM | Link to this
Im so tired of Atlanta bragging about its success with cleaning up the city by closing the projects. Giving them section 8 vouchers doesnt solve the problem, it only cleans up Atlanta but tears down the area where you send them to.
I live in stone mountain and section 8 is just really bringing the place down. Its always the same scenario: women with kids moves in, shortly followed by man thats not supposed to be there, followed by pitbull, followed by hood behavior. Im sure this is why clayton has went down the tubes also. Its not fair that i have to work hard for what i have and the person next to me can pretty much lay back to get there house. A house is a right not a privilege.
If section 8 was allowed to go wherever they please, they would be protest left and right, but since they dont go to dunwoody and the nicer areas of north dekalb, no one says anything.
If you do a google search you will see nationwide that just about all major cities that clean there cities up end up dragging down the suburbs where they dump the people.
Im not saying all of section 8 is bad, alot of people are there due to certain situations and financially strapped, but those people work hard and most of the time get themselves out that situation.
By Regina
July 31, 2008 3:38 PM | Link to this
Section 8 vouchers often brings a lifestyle to a neighborhood that doesn’t share the same value system. The voucher families should have to complete a training program before the residents move into a neighborhood. The training program should consist of classes on code enforcement, how to be a good neighbor, Homeowners Associations, etc. Better neighborhoods are better because people have built and sustained them by their values and their commitments. There are some families who are committed to changing their life. However, the majority of the people bring their project way of life with them.
By statehotwaterheaterscori
August 19, 2008 6:40 PM | Link to this
The site www.ajc.com is cool site, respect, webmaster. And look at this http://carolinecs.150m.com/state_select_gas_water_heater.html > state select gas water heater