Public housing at a crossroads

The intersection of Merritts and Techwood streets in Atlanta was once so notorious as a den of drug dealing that motorists routinely ignored the traffic light rather than risk stopping.

Now, about seven years later, people park their cars on the street, walk their dogs, and jog along the sidewalks.

So what happened to change the neighborhood?

A blighted public-housing project was demolished and replaced by a new one, named Centennial Place. Where barracks-style buildings once dominated the scene, attractive town houses now stand. Low-income tenants with subsidized rents occupy about 60 percent of the neighborhood, with the rest going to middle-class residents who pay the going rate for an apartment.

The result: a safe, vibrant streetscape so different that four condominium high-rises were built nearby, and a tourist-attracting $200 million aquarium is in the works.

This isn't an isolated incident. Over the past decade, public-housing success stories have become more common. Government "projects" - towering, crowded hotbeds of crime and despair - have been replaced by attractive low-rise town houses in many communities.

These changes have been the result of HOPE VI, an innovative redevelopment strategy of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Both praised and maligned, HOPE VI nonetheless marked a turning point in public-housing history. But now it appears that HOPE VI won't be continued, and uncertainty about the next phase of public housing is cause for concern among those who worry that poor families will have even fewer options for housing than they do now.

Instead of building more public housing, the White House wants to create more opportunities for home ownership, especially among minorities. It also wants states, not the federal government, to play a bigger role in administering the existing public-housing voucher program, which subsidizes rents so poor people can afford to live in privately owned housing that otherwise would be out of their price range.

"Though HOPE VI has shown great promise, that promise has yet to be fulfilled," said Mel Martinez, HUDsecretary, in a congressional hearing last week. While acknowledging that the program, begun in 1992, has mostly been a success, he said HUD officials were concerned about its sluggish implementation.

The federal government has provided $5 billion for HOPE VI projects, but because of various delays, only about half of that has actually been spent.

Advocates contend that the slow pace of construction is understandable. Building a HOPE VI project requires a complex financing arrangement that includes both public and private money, and it takes time to put a deal together, says Kevin Marchman, who ran the program during the Clinton administration.

"It may be slow going," he says, "but once the housing is up and complete, people rave about it."

The problem with discontinuing the program, as many public-housing officials see it, is that HOPE VI's mission is unfinished. Hundreds of thousands of families continue to live in outdated, poor-quality housing.

To address this need, Mr. Martinez has hinted that HUD could be working on some sort of alternative plans to HOPE VI, which might be ready within a few months.

Behind the scenes, talk circulates about plans to introduce congressional legislation that would pick up on HOPE VI's theme of leveraging private investment for housing projects. Linking such legislation with education reform could also be part of the package, since good schools are closely tied to real estate values, and, by extension, urban renewal efforts.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3