Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects


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Freakzilla
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Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/ ... 3&src=news" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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This article is a year old but provides some history...

Atlanta's Public Housing Revamp Shows Real Hope for the Future
Atlanta Journal Constitution
07/28/08
Jim Wooten

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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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Hope it works. It could just result in an export of the problem to other states. But I hope that they achieve redistribution in as painless a way as possible.
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Oh wow. A government band-aid solution was actually overturned and quashed by....the government? Now I have seen everything :)
Honestly though, 30 years isn't so bad a turnaround. At this rate, we should just about have the system fixed by the time Sol goes nova....hopefully with a little time to spare. :wink: :lol:
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Oh those halcyon days of summer.... 8-)

BOOM! :laughing:






(Not to worry, Sol's too small to go nova.)
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Yeah but isn't it going to expand until we are engulfed by it... :(
Ah English, the language where pretty much any word can have any meaning! - A Thing of Eternity
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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SadisticCynic wrote:Yeah but isn't it going to expand until we are engulfed by it... :(
That doesn't make any sense to me. It seems it would have to expand to engulf us...

Anyway, Earth will be a "charred ball" long before we're engulfed.
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Oh wow, they changed it! Guess the new theory is more accurate. Well, when Sol becomes a Red Giant, you get the same effect :)
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

Post by SadisticCynic »

Freakzilla wrote:
SadisticCynic wrote:Yeah but isn't it going to expand until we are engulfed by it... :(
That doesn't make any sense to me. It seems it would have to expand to engulf us...

Anyway, Earth will be a "charred ball" long before we're engulfed.
You're right about the second part; as to the first, isn't that what I said? :think:
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Re: Atlanta To Become First City Without Large Housing Projects

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Where's Lisan when we need him? :)
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