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Richmond gets millions for public housing renovation
03/14/2009 7:35 AM by John M
The RRHA will use $10.8 million in stimulus funds to renovate public housing in Gilpin, Creighton, Whitcomb, Mosby, and Fulton. The scheduled work includes installation of more efficient windows and kitchen and bathroom renovations, and should begin in the next 120 days. [via]
This is great example of why the stimulus bill is such a disaster. Why are we pouring more money into failed social experiments like public housing? Within a year’s time any improvements made will be delapidated, vandalized or outright destroyed. Worse yet, we’ll be incentivizing more people to come and stay longer in public housing, thereby further depleting city resources for public safety, etc. Enough with Uncle Sam’s plantations!! Tear them down and give the residents a decent place to live!
It seems a little odd to me for RRHA to renovate Gilpin Court as they are also in the process of redeveloping that area, which I assume means tearing down the existing housing units within the next few years. I have heard rumors that Mosby is also on the list for redevelopment, but I haven’t come across any confirmation on that one. Hopefully, they won’t just demolish these units with their brand new boilers, energy efficient windows, etc; otherwise it seems a bit wasteful. Perhaps some of the money would be better suited to begin redevelopment earlier than expected, especially in the case of Gilpin. Does anyone have more details on this project beyond what is in the Times Dispatch article?
Houdon, I have a few questions for you, which I would like for you to answer point by point:
1) How many times have you actually been inside one of the apartments in one of the projects names?
2) How many personal acquaintances do you have who live in the projects? This means people whose name you know and who know your name, and who you would recognize in a crowd.
3) How many hours have you spent working with any group, such as Habitat for Humanity, whose mission is to build affordable housing for the poor?
4) Other than your own prejudice and the “news” headlines, on what actual, first hand experience with public housing, its residents, or the issue of affordable housing do you base your comments?
I must say that I agree with Houdon wholeheartedly. Public housing units are absolutely abused by the residents who live there. I have had occasion to be inside one of these units at least monthly over the past couple of years. They are universally destroyed by the people who live there. Why make them nicer? The residents should first demonstrate a willingness to keep them clean, to respect their homes and themselves enough to deserve something nice. Public housing is supposed to be temporary!
The Stretch Monster, I agree with Houdon as far as this being the wrong thing to funnel money. The housing projects should be demolished and I’d gladly operate the first bulldozers. These places destroyed neighborhoods and are the breeding grounds of Richmond’s social ills. They must go if we want to better the city. And if you wonder, I live next to Fairfield Court and have all my life. I’ve had neighbors in Fairfield who I knew by name and vistied. Most have used it correctly and moved on but the majority of the people I’ve known have lived there all their lives, have no plans on leaving, and you find some of them standing on the corner, obviously up to no good. Little kids I knew years ago when I helped at Fairfield are scary now and I wouldn’t trust them. They were raised by the projects. This money would be better spent in ways to fundamentally better these people’s lives instead of their way of life.
I wonder if the money from the stimulus has to go to renovating existing public housing, or if it is up to the local government as to how it is spent?
Houdon you are right, and I’m not speaking from what I’ve heard, I’m speaking from what I have seen first hand multiple times. Though there are definitely those out there who do “get back on their feet” and move on. Most use and abuse the system in anyway possible.
Houdon…ignorance should be your name. Low income people deserve decent housing just like anyone else and in the neighborhoods they are use it and/or convenient to them. Where do you propose to give them a decent place to live…in the suburbs where people like you will boycott and protest them living there. Somewhere out of sight and out of mind where they can’t get anywhere because there will be no public transportation.
There is nothing wrong with money being used to make it a better place to live right where they are. And unless you have “have been there and done that” your comments are of no value and very insulting to the people that live there.
But does everybody really “deserve decent housing?”
When I was poor, I rented a room with busted windows in Jackson Ward and slept on the floor with the roaches until I could afford a cot. I had a job that required me to be at work at 5 am and I used public transportation and a bicycle to get there every day on time. I’m not asking for a merit badge or anything, but it never once crossed my mind to ask someone else to provide me with better accommodations than I could afford myself.
If a person hits a tough spot in life, it makes sense for the government / society to help them over the hump. But that should be a very temporary (and humbling) kind of thing. I can’t imagine myself ever thinking that I DESERVE to burden my fellow citizens with the cost of providing me with a place to live for any longer than a few weeks or so until I could get back on my feet…
Above: I should have written “When I was poorER…”
(In other words, I still ain’t exactly rich – but I’ve spent time in the military and used my GI bill to go to school, etc. so am at least no longer sleeping on the floor!)
I have been in several of the units in Fairfield and Mosby and Whitcomb. The people whom I know there are decent and are trying to raise their families in the best way they know how and are able. The units I’ve been in have been clean and well kept. In comparison, we had a house in the Fan that we rented to some “nice VCU girls” several years ago, and they trashed that place worse than anything I’ve personally seen in a Richmond housing project.
My point is that blanket statements of the kind made by Houdon are inaccurate and divisive.
“Judge not lest ye be judged…” What a beautiful refrain…
We need affordable/subsidized housing of one kind or another, but it does seem really odd to upgrade these units just after RRHA has presented its redevelopment plans for Gilpin Court, which is, as I understand, supposed to be demolished in the new few years according to that plan.
stretch monster. yeah i agree with you, anyone can make a decent place into a trash hole. public housing, just like any other kind of housing includes many different kinds of people, some that will use it for its original purpose and some who will suck the life out if it and then ask for more. its a tricky subject, where to draw the line though.
Instead of renovating what is already there, could they rebuild completely? I am thinking about the mixed income developments that have been touted lately.
We are going to pour all of this money into areas that have already been slated to be redeveloped and essentially torn down, but we won’t save teacher’s jobs. The only county that is really using the stimulus money to save teacher’s jobs is Chesterfield. So, to get to the point, we are going to lose teachers and make class sizes bigger and the system’s cracks wider and, therefore, make sure that there is affordable housing for all of those kids we fail since they won’t be able to get a good job. I see. We make sure there are bigger and better projects for people to live in since we aren’t going to educate them. I get it.
I’ve been told at RPS that we’ll be able to keep jobs that were on the line.
Spotsylvania, Caroline, Stafford, and most Northern counties are not using the stimulus money for school jobs. Hanover has announced it will be making cuts too now. Counties that are not necessarily RIF-ing people are not filling vacancies which will also attribute to larger class sizes and fewer electives. No matter what, there is a shift coming and its not for the better.
That’s a great point. The city of Richmond is cutting MILLIONS of dollars from education this year, but apparently pumping millions into renovating public housing – some of which is evidently slated to be demolished and rebuilt anew in just a few years.
At a time when our country is faced with a devastated economy and record deficits, this use of tax dollars seems pretty darn wasteful.
Bullwinkle, you are what makes this country great!
My biggest fear in what has happened in the last couple months is that it seems that a large majority of people are lacking the will to pull themselves up.
My comments above weren’t intended as a knock against public housing. As someone who has worked with housing authorities across the region, I have been in public housing across Virginia and the southeast. Many of the comments above represent the best and worst of the public housing population. As most business folks know, the examples that are made within every population are usually the outliers on a bell curve. The destruction and vandalism of public housing complexes are usually done by a select few. But to some of the points made, there are also a select few that see it as a temporary stepping stone to a better life (just check the average length of time for tenants on the rent rolls).
All of this is NOT to say public housing is the answer. Nothing’s perfect, but I think RRHA is taking the correct steps in looking to redevelop these poverty pockets into mixed income areas. There have been successes with the HOPE VI initiative across the country to redevelop in this manner. If you’re against these pockets, then take a step to assist and support RRHA in having success. If you disagree that its the government’s role to provide housing for those in poverty, then do as one suggested and work with organizations like Habitat. I personally don’t think anyone deserves anything, but as one of the richest countries in the world, we can attempt to make it available to most.
As far as the stimulus money goes, I didn’t think it was the best way to spend my tax dollars, but the money is going to be spent so let’s spend it in Richmond. For those of us who buy in to the Broken Windows theory – keeping these units to a minimum standards of upkeep will mitigate some of the bad influences in them.
“…from each according to his ability, to each according to his need (needs).”
Karl Marx and your tax dollars at work.
honk if i am paying your mortgage
I think stimulus money is earmarked, that is, the recipient cannot decide how to use a large pool of dollars. It is sent for special purposes. RPS received, I believe, some direct stimulus money, as did some other agencies. Is the RRHA master plan not a ten-year plan, and are not the current rep[air plans short-term patches?
Sort of related…Style article says RPS buildings would be fixed then torn down:
styleweekly.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publis
Personally, I hope RPS gets the attention and money before public housing. While making the public housing projects more energy efficient is important, I agree that the residents won’t have the same feeling of ownership needed for long term stewardship.
Richmond needs to put the schools back at the center of its community development.
I wonder if part of the renovations will be buying satellite dishes.
spend it on bus tickets & bulldozers
Ron…The stimulus money is sort of earmarked. As I have learned, it all depends on how a lawyer reads it. Most counties are using the stimulus money for education as it was intended, to save jobs, class ratios, and so on. Some counties have managed to spend their money differently because they found a few lawyers that could interpret their earmarking differently. In other words, if the state can find a lawyer that can back them up, they can spend the money almost in any way they chose. As long as the money appears to be going to something sort of like it was suppose to, then its all good.
the money will be intelligently used to buy votes
I have lived in Gilpin Court my whole life and am now in college. I say that just to demonstrate that not every poor person from the projects is ignorant. I like the stimulus money being used to renovate the current projects. They tore down Blackwell with promises of building more housing elsewhere. That has not been done, and now many residents have to use a section 8. How many places do you think accept section 8 in Richmond other than other “ghetto” neighboorhoods? Also what incentives are there to keep a nice house in the ghetto? If you do it’ll just get robbed. All you people who write on here saying “ive been into a project” try living there for 20 years. You will have a different opinion. Just because we’re poor doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a chance like everyone else.
All I will say is that you don’t know until you have actually lived there. My Grandma had been living in Creighton Court for 24 years until a week ago. It was only suppose to be temporary for her but she was bombarded with tons of obstacles of her own and those of family members. Sure this place was not so pleasant to the eye and sure some ills come from a place like this but there is also a lot of good that come from places like this. I don’t think they should renovate then redevelop, I personally think redevelopment would be a nice step. Because “pride” plays a big part in the world. If one has something to be proud of then one will protect that and take care of that (most of the time), but if one is looked down on for what he/she has or where he/she lives because it looks like the slums or it means your family is poor because you can’t afford a house and you have to live in the projects then there is a better chance that they won’t care about the place they live because they feel they have nothing to be proud of.
these niggaz mane knocc shit down were ppl been there all they life shit i got family over there in mosby court and they been there for years…they old and lived over 70 years already been in the jects foe eva mane knocc em down the projects still the jects for real doe
Why change? If u break up concentrated poverty it might move into neighorhoods of those elected officals, school supers, or other city workers we pay their six figure salaries. RRHA will be slow to change the type of housing or freely give section 8 vouchers for current housing project residents to move into single family dwellings. Keeping the vote in a concentrated area helps the political powers in place. If they decide to break up the 6 miles of proverty Richmond could have the best schools in the area.
You can pay me 1/2 of that money to knock it all down.