Again, how does the "dispersal" work?

1. Get some free federal funding and line up some developers
2. ?
3. Profit.

One of the greatest crimes against humanity in America was Urban Renewal. It destroyed black families and created multi-generational poverty. What is now the Civic Coliseum, the City Police Department and Townview Terrace used to be homes where black families lived. Those homes were leveled and the projects replaced them some distance away.

We have now returned full circle. So now these people will have individual homes. Do they have families? Homes will not solve the destruction of families and community.

In this process 300 people will walk a trail of tears to some unknown undisclosed location. Out of sight out of mind. You are witnessing the political terraforming of a city. Back to the 60's again.

This is progress?

Poor people need a place to live but some solutions come with too high a price in community degradation and predation. Decreasing density and increasing home ownership shelters fewer people but ups quality of life for those that live there and the larger community.

Twenty years ago, when I started working as a public defender, College Homes was T-R-O-U-B-L-E where unexplainable murder happened on the street too often. Hope VI reworked the dynamic. I know people were displaced but Mechanicsville is a healthier neighborhood by far with the changes.

I was glad to read the news today about Walter P beginning a similar transformation.

Aren't the new big developments on the N side of sharps ridge and off Sutherland geared toward section 8? Though they seem to have better screening and community standards than a stereotypical project.

I deliver food for FISH and can point you towards a few 16-32 unit apartment complexes that seem to have taken on that role.

Speaking of projects, go by the old christenberry heights if you haven't already. It has been redone and is quite charming if you are into the bungalow style.

____________________________
more construction, less politics

I wonder that too. Where did the people from College Homes and these other places end up? The new section 8 places look better. You hear about some crime but probably not as much. I wonder if vacant projects or schools could be turned into supportive housing for the homeless.

$80 million divided by 200 units = $400,000 per unit. I know there are restrictions on how the money can be spent, but government money comes from taxpayers (income & sales) and somehow it just seems that the $80 mil divided by 500 units (= $160,000 per unit) would go a long way toward buying existing housing stock. Many residents are not part of the problem, but are trapped, economically, in a high-crime environment.

While I am all for getting rid of places like Walter P. and getting low income folks into better housing situations, the shut down of this complex will end up hurting our neighborhoods that are struggling to revitalize. Why? The dispersal will send Walter P. refugees into section 8 housing in the revitalizing neighborhoods. Why? Because one of the plagues of struggling neighborhoods is too much section 8 housing. Why is this a problem? Most sec. 8 housing is owned by absentee slumlords who do not care to whom they rent or what the property looks like, and do not check on the status of the property--or tenants (as in who actually is living there vs. who is supposed to be living there and whether or not they pick up the trash). How can Sec. 8 properties be slums? The HUD guidelines for what is acceptable are very lax and once the property is on the sec. 8 list, it stays there..
So what happens to the neighborhoods? The slumlords get checks each month for MORE than the market value of the rent (sec. 8 rent is almost always more than what could be charged to non-sec. 8 tenants for the same property), the neighbors get to spend their time calling 911 and 311 because of crime and codes issues, and the properties look like hell. This dispersal also will create a housing market for slumlords to buy and minimally fix up lower priced properties. Dropped ceilings and cheap paneling anyone? How about some crack heads next door? They should not be there, but their girlfriends get section 8 cuz they are the mamas. This process is how our older neighborhoods were destroyed in the first place. It is also why there need to be limits on the amount of sec. 8 housing per neighborhood. But, that won't happen. So good-bye to rising property values in our inner city 'hoods. Back to the cycle of blight and flight.