Public housing in the form of massive super-block developments replaced dilapidated and overcrowded tenements during the postwar era. These developments embraced modernist architectural values and saw themselves as “towers in the park” that were shielded from the decay of an industrial city. Eventually these isolated towers served as breeding grounds for poverty, vandalism and criminal behavior at many public housing developments.
The “Home-ownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere” program (HOPE VI grant program) was established in 1989 as a possible solution by the Federal Government. The program was designed to replace poverty and crime stricken towers with low rise single and multifamily homes that would match the scale of the neighborhood. The first round of grants totaling $570 million were awarded in 1993. Within ten years the HOPE VI program had become the most visible Federal initiative to house the urban poor. The HOPE VI program also awarded grants for renovation of existing structures, but many housing authorities chose to demolish and rebuild than pump more money into dilapidated developments.
Many housing authorities began to build high density residential projects by mixing the traditional public housing clients (those earning less than 30 percent of area median income) with middle income (those earning less than 60 percent of local median income) and market rate units. They leveraged the financing provided under the HOPE VI program with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) as well as private financing for market rate and affordable housing units. While the HOPE VI program has been highly successful in providing quality low rise housing at a neighborhood scale, it has also driven up real estate values in the inner city neighborhoods. Most of the HOPE VI projects have failed to replace all of the housing units that were torn down, thus forcing vulnerable population to look for alternative accommodations in the form of Section 8 vouchers or private housing.
If the goal of HOPE VI or public housing in general was to encourage self-sufficiency, the efforts have failed miserably since only about five percent of residents have left the housing assistance program. Moving people into quality housing does not alter the requirements for education, skills development or urban amenities. The government has begun to realize that it is not just housing but the neighborhood revitalization, which should be the focus of their efforts. They have begun to look at education, early childhood development, transportation, employment readiness, drug rehabilitation and other social and cultural programs to move people out of the cycle of housing assistance. The holistic, big picture thinking is essential for integrating those on assistance with the rest of the community to eliminate the stigma of poverty and public assistance.
Here is a video on “How Public Housing Transformed New York
City 1935-67:
Reference: Raskin, David, Revisiting the Hope VI Public Housing Program’s Legacy, Governing Magazine, May 2012
Photo Credit: Looking
west from Corlears Hook towards Manhattan Civic Center by Wikiwiki718 under the
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
Resources:
No comments:
Post a Comment