Chicago Residents Join Rally to Save Atlanta Public Housing

By Matthew Cardinale, News Editor, The Atlanta Progressive News (June 27, 2007)

Photographs by Jonathan Springston, Senior Staff Writer

(APN) ATLANTA Residents of, and advocates for, Chicago public housing joined Atlanta residents and advocates today for a rally at Atlanta City Hall. About 100 in total protested Atlanta's plans to demolish public housing. The rally coincided with the first day of the US Social Forum.

Organizations represented included the Task Force for the Homeless, ACORN, Women in Transition, Poor People's Human Rights Campaign, and Atlanta public housing resident associations. Tuna sandwiches and orange-colored drink were served for the homeless.

"I heard there's a public housing crisis. I said, oh no, that's where I wanna be. This is public housing people. This is family," Willie JR Fleming, of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, said.

"This is a clear cut national plan of economic cleansing. In United Nations talk, this is an atrocity, a crime against humanity. This is what we call human rights violations," Fleming said.

"We're here to protect rights of public housing [residents]. We represent ten Housing Associations. We're at risk of being displaced. There's organizations coming in, condos. They said it's [Chicago public housing units are] physically obsolete. We want a structural engineer to come in. They're trying to block her," Lonnie Richardson, of Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), in Chicago, said.

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Federal Budget Cuts' Impact Public Housing

10 percent of phoenix's public housing units empty.

Crystal Lopez paints the toenails of her daughter Alexis, 2, while Areana, 5, and Anthony, 11 months, play outside her Phoenix apartment. Lopez says she moved more than 15 times in the two years she waited to get into public housing.

Thousands of people in Phoenix are waiting for a place to call home

Casey Newton
The Arizona Republic

More than 13,000 people are desperate to move into Phoenix public housing, which offers stable, affordable and relatively safe housing to the city's poorest residents.

Despite the long waiting list, nearly 10 percent of Phoenix's public housing is vacant, with the average unit sitting empty for more than five months before the city's housing staff places a new tenant.

Some 250 units are going unused, costing the city as much as $600,000 a year in lost revenue - revenue that would fund the very operations needed to fill the units more quickly.
The reason, housing officials say, is a staff shortage brought about by budget cuts at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Two years ago, Phoenix laid off 30 percent of its Housing Department staff. Today, the city lacks the resources to quickly refurbish apartments after they're vacated, officials say, or to process applications in a reasonable amount of time.

Funding shortfalls have required painful cuts across the nation, with housing authorities laying off staff members by the hundreds. But in other cities, vacancy rates remain far lower.

Phoenix maintains 2,473 federally subsidized apartments and homes, and the average unit sits empty for more than 23 weeks. Despite facing similar budget pressures, cities such as Dallas and San Antonio move new tenants into vacated units in as little as three weeks.

Concerned about the department's performance, some Phoenix City Council members are discussing dismantling the Housing Department, either privatizing it or folding it into another city department. More HERE