Session 13 Housing and Community Development

Housing seems to be a critical component of poverty in the United States and particularly here in the local metropolitan Atlanta area.  This session showcases many of the problems in public housing and offers a few solutions.  Mon Valley Institute is a collaboration of CDCs working together to revitalize a local Philadelphia neighborhood.  Philanthropic groups like The Visionaries dedicate time, pool resources and build relationships to help under-privileged and the ex convicted criminal.   Adequate Housing seems to be a core goal for the communities they serve.  Like the MVI, the LISC organization works in the Palm Beach County region of Florida attempting to pool political, banking and human resources to revitalize distressed neighborhood plagued with blight and foreclosures.  Their goal is to rehab communities using local sources to build from within.
Here in Atlanta, housing continues to be an issue despite the Atlanta Housing Authority’s mission to decentralize poverty and tear down project housing communities.  One problem I cited earlier in the course is the huge problem with relocating a family from project homes into single family homes in great neighborhoods when no or little education is given.  Lawn maintenance, property cleanliness, contributing to the peaceful enjoyment of the community is a huge issue.  While the problem that is sought to be addressed can appear to be noble, homeowners, like myself, do not want to live next door to someone who has no sense of community, thinks that the home is best suited for a loud party and that there is nothing wrong with parking the non-running car on the lawn.  As a former employee of a large housing authority, common complaints were of excessive fighting and boisterous activities from section 8 voucher program participants as well as unauthorized inhabitants, private businesses being run out of homes, excessive police presence, and even discharging of weapons.  Renee Glover’s vision could be an eventual model for local housing authorities everywhere to demolish their projects and relocate the indigent families, but in its current status seems to be a monumental failure.  Program participants are notorious for destroying their landlord’s homes, stealing appliances and being general nuisances to the communities they have moved into.  Atlanta Housing Authority should create resources to help families transition into their homes and provide training on how to be a good neighbor.  Their Compliance team should be enlarged and allowed more discretion when it comes to holding the families to a standard of family obligations.
While poverty is certainly affected by lack of proper housing and even concentration of it, the rush to correct it seems to exacerbate the community issues and stigmas placed on poor people.  Voucher holders are allowed to move every year which not only adds to the vagrancy of a neighborhood, but costs the landlord considerable money to rehab the properties and get them ready for the next renter.  Also allowing such movement does not create an incentive for being a good neighbor.   There is very little expectation for the program participant to improve the communities they move to.  The current economy causes landlords to be desperate and rent to anyone with a voucher.  This condition can lead to the demise of an otherwise quiet and peaceful neighbor.  Both LISC and MVI should employ the training of life skills to make sure that the people that they help to find housing are willing to be homeowners willing to work hard to preserve the homes and communities they live in.