Housing Authority purchase 4 SE apartment complexes (Huntsville, Madison: house, neighborhoods, best schools)

[Reactionary]

clamoore - the Huntsville Housing Authority acts on its own. The Mayor appoints the Board (IIRC all current Board members are Spencer appointees), but otherwise the HHA is an unaccountable (to citizens) bureaucracy - they answer to HUD. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm sure someone is making money off of federal housing programs (and making campaign contributions with some of the money they get).

There is a big nation-wide push to decentralize public housing - we're seeing the local implementation of it.

IMO it's better to concentrate public housing so that services can be more efficiently provided (transportation, police, welfare, mental health). I think that spreading the public housing around will diminish access to these services (or increase the cost). Plus concentrating housing limits the negative impact on the City (crime, property values).

[clamoore]

Reactionary, I would add that the residents of Public Housing should have access to employment. This would offer an opportunity to attain self-sufficiency and eliminate the need for public housing. The downtown area is not an option for accessible employment. The County has many satellite offices for services. Would it not be preferrable to relocate public housing to be near the employment opportunities, while remaining close to satellite offices for services? Retail, food industry and construction would be good first-tier employers. These opportunities are increasingly in Madison and the Owens Crossroads area, like the Hampton Cove neighborhood.

[friday13]

Originally Posted by clamoore

Reactionary, I would add that the residents of Public Housing should have access to employment. This would offer an opportunity to attain self-sufficiency and eliminate the need for public housing. The downtown area is not an option for accessible employment. The County has many satellite offices for services. Would it not be preferrable to relocate public housing to be near the employment opportunities, while remaining close to satellite offices for services? Retail, food industry and construction would be good first-tier employers. These opportunities are increasingly in Madison and the Owens Crossroads area, like the Hampton Cove neighborhood.

Haven't you heard ? there's a bus terminal in the works (or rather say cards, if construction hasn't started yet) at BridgeStreet, in just walking distance from CRP............ ok, that was a smart-pants sarcastic remark (not that the poor fellas would know CAD, biotech, missile defense) ...but spreading them out the city sounds alot like the subsidized-housing children going to MCS (especially the high-end (?!) ones, no name-naming here). P.S. How I wish HCS used the same socio-economic logic and alleviate Chapman's/Nor'east HSV performing problem (yeah, I live there and I wouldn't have to move if the stats would've been different)

and I might add: some of them are currently employed ...in criminal activities...read the Police blotter on al.com - the North precinct has the longest laundry-list of misdeeds any day..

[mm42]

I swear people talk about this as if public housing is for no one but bums! Most people who live in public housing or section 8 already have jobs, they just have low-paying jobs and/or lots of dependents.

And the de-concentration started eons ago - there are already 1200 families scattered throughout Huntsville using section 8 subsidies for private apartments. You don't know they are there because there's not a big sign or alarmist newspaper article about it.

Folks, poor people are actually people! They are not some kind of Martians with school-killing and property value-killing Ray-guns.

Mixed income is not a social experiment - it works! In Atlanta they converted Techwood Homes, the oldest and nastiest public housing project in the US of A, into a mixed-income development. It has a combination of section 8 housing, apartments, all the way up to high-end townhomes, and it works! Property values have soared in there - yes, even with poor people living next door!

[friday13]

Huntsville city councilwoman calls for resignation of Housing Authority officials - Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com

[amsa526]

I have no problem with living next to someone using Section 8.
I have a problem living next to a public housing area. It hasn't worked here ... and hasn't worked even in the Left Coast (SF Bay Area - go google Richmond, Hunter's Point). When you concentrate public housing in one area ---- the other residents leave ---- further isolating these people and creating a vicious cycle of poverty, hopelessness, despair and violence. Soon violence begets violence.
They should just expand the Section 8 program and incentivise landlords to accept Section 8. When these down and out people get out of the 'public housing' ---- the new environment is more conducive in helping them break out of the cycle of poverty. Granted - that environment is not the sole determinant ---- it does help ... so does other support programs - informal and formal. The focus should be on the informal programs ... like family and church.
The government is not a good steward for these social programs. This is not what government's core competency... even in radically left San Francisco ---- they are converting some of the public housing into private developments and moving people out --- fanning them out in the suburbs - where there are community support 'informal' programs like churches and families.

[amsa526]

Has someone ever checked out the HHA members' background?
What is their philosophical leanings?

Just curious...

[amsa526]

This is PHASE TWO of the PLAN TO REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH.

Phase 1 was re-engineer the economy and basic market forces (i.e. banks).

OK I am kidding but it does lead to a redistribution of wealth.

[friday13]

Mayor Tommy Battle says no change for scattered public housing plan - Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com

[DvlsAdvc8]

I think you'll find that distributing the poor population among the more well-off population reduces many of the problematic issues associated with the poor. Having lived in Baltimore, where the boundaries of impoverished neighborhoods seem very clearly defined, I can tell you that there is a snow-ball affect that occurs. Everything - drug use, violence, property crime - becomes amplified. The only benefit is that it is fairly contained... but in the long run it will become a larger and larger area of the city until there are whole swaths of city that are blights as was the case with Baltimore.

Honestly though, I'm against public housing projects entirely, because they allow high concentrations of poor. My preferred solution is to require all private apartment complexes of a certain size to have a minimum (and maximum) number/percentage of section 8 tennants. That way you break up clusters of poverty and integrate them with regular culture (as opposed to the poverty culture that exists in the ghetto). Sort of creating a "market within the market" to house the poor as complexes compete to lure poor tennants in order to keep their "low income percentage" within bounds.

There is absolutely a cost associated - taxes to cover the subsidy, and likely slightly higher rents - but IMO, it is no greater than the over all costs of all these housing projects and the resulting police etc necessary to deal with the snowball of crime that the critical mass of concentrated poor populations creates.

I guess opinions on this sort of thing vary depending on whether you're someone who thinks that the poor will drag us all down, or on the other hand, we drag the poor up.