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Style interviews Sheila Hill-Christian

Style Magazine interviews Sheila Hill-Christian, new chief of the city’s housing authority.

From the interview

Hill-Christian: It’s not acceptable to create an urban ghetto — that thing that takes people who are economically distressed and puts them into pockets and sets them off apart from the city.

STYLE: Our public housing complexes are relics, most [of them] utterly rundown havens for crime. What impressions are you left with when you drive through, say, Gilpin, Fairfield, Mosby, Hillside, Creighton or Whitcomb?

Hill-Christian: My impressions are of bleakness. I see a lot of unemployed young African-American males out on the street, in the middle of the day. Sometimes I see children out on the streets, during school hours. And I see segregation at its worst. I also see people who are struggling — mothers who are single parents just trying to get out there and make a living and provide for their family. They’d like to move outside the area, but there are so many barriers. I see opportunity, too, to change this.