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2.06.2009

HOPE VI - We Keep Giving Fish Expecting Different Results

Source: blogger, K Nicole Jones Presents: Crib Notes

When I lived in DC, my friends and I called the neighboring suburbs in Prince George County, ‘Greater Southeast’ (a reference to Southeastern D.C). Southeast D.C., was for, generations ubiquitous with urban decay—high poverty, high crime, and high blight with few exceptions. Prince George, on the other hand, was known for having the largest population of upper middle class African American residents. The most obvious reason for the population shift was the rising cost of living associated with gentrification.

But it was while I was an evaluator for a D.C.HOPE VI project (a HUD program started under the Clinton administration to raze physically and socially obsolete housing projects and turn them into mixed income communities), the reason for the shifting crime pattern became even more evident. It was not just gentrifications, but use of HOPE VI, as an urban renewal tool rather than a an inclusive “neighborhood revitalization” tool that was creating a storm of long term disaster.

Under the program, Housing Authorities are authorized to use Section 8 vouchers to help relocate tenants. While housing authorities are merely “required to provide eligible residents with relocation benefits and community and supportive services.”, there was little incentive to provide comprehensive support to residents looking to return or successfully integrate into new neighborhoods. The challenge of taking apart social networks and asking residents to move to places without them has been largely ignored. Instead, Housing authorities have shifted the pervasiveness of poverty out of the projects and scattered it about.

As it stands, less then 10% of former residents actually return to after construction is complete. Less than 20% of the new residents in most of these projects are even low to moderate income (less than 80% of area median income). Instead, former residents move to new communities with no support network and no means of figuring out how to create a new one. Though the legislation requires such support, providing it with families scattered across counties and cities is nearly impossible, and many families become invisible again–except this time without a social network.

Since HOPE VI began, crime has been exploding in the relatively stable near-in suburbs of many mid-sized cities like Mecklenburg(Charlotte) and North Memphis(Memphis); Maywood(Chicago) while it is subsiding substantially in many inner-cities. A study recently conducted by husband and wife team, Richard Janikowski, a criminologist with the University of Memphis, and Phyllis Betts, a housing expert also at the University of Memphis, drives the speculation toward fact. Betts and Janikowski put together a map of crime patterns and a map of section 8 rentals, and voila—they almost perfectly matched.

HOPE VI could be so much. But it is not. HUD should be incentivizing projects to figure out creative ways to re-integrate greater numbers of poor and moderate income residents into the new development (say at least 25%, for example) It should require housing authorities to design comprehensive, multi-tiered strategies to address joblessness, childcare, and eduation while also incentivizing the “step-up” from fully sibsidized housing to possible homeownership. Instead, it gives Section 8 vouchers and permission to housing authorities to simply say “go away.”

Don’t get me wrong, the goal of turning physically obsolescent, blighted public housing into modern, decent housing is of great importance, but the program should be more about creating economically and socially healthy communities and less about the beautification of real estate.

Its high time we time we stopped giving people fish and asking them to go away. Perhaps, its time we, at both the non-profit and public sector levels spend some more time teaching people how to fish instead. K Nicole Jones Presents: Crib Notes


2.04.2009

Michelle Obama Visits HUD

Michelle Obama

Source: The Washington Post

Michelle Obama greets Department of Housing and Urban Development employees today during a visit to the department's headquarters. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

First Lady Michelle Obama continued her tour of Federal agencies and departments today, stopping by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to thank staffers and remind them that their work is critical as Americans face housing troubles.

Today’s visit, coupled with a stop at the Department of Education earlier this week, was partly designed as a “listening tour,” a public thank you to the department's workforce and partly an effort to “rally the troops” as the Obama administration sets priorities. The order of her visits to federal offices is based on her schedule, not her policy priorities, aides stressed.

Both the physical set up and tone of today’s event resembled the hundreds of campaign appearances she made last year, to mostly welcoming crowds. Her remarks were mixed with serious comments and casual jokes.

Here are a few of the highlights:

-- “It’s of critical importance that we stem the tide of foreclosures and find a way to keep people in their homes,” she told several hundred HUD staffers at the department’s Washington headquarters.

-- “Homeownership, at least as I knew it growing up on the South Side of Chicago, has always been one of the building blocks for strong neighborhoods, for strong schools and for strong families. People who own their homes and take care of their homes, it leads to the well-being of the entire community. It’s critical.”

-- “The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to play a critical role in implementing elements of the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will help our communities,” she later said.

-- “Barack and I always believed that investing in the community that you live in first and foremost you live in is critical. And for the people here at this agency, we are now your neighbors,” she said to cheers.

-- “Many of you have been here for decades, working hard on these issues,” she said to cheers from the mostly African American crowd. “I can get an Amen on that,” she joked with a smile. More HERE