Changes in public housing bring fresh start for families, By Timothy Pratt, November 16, 2009, Las Vegas Sun: “Shea Hampton-Earl’s living room is empty, but her head is full of ideas. This spring, she will plant a garden with tomatoes and collard greens in the back yard of the house she just moved into. And in a few years, the 36-year-old mother of seven wants to buy the house with its path that leads to a park in the back and a tree-lined street in the front. Only two months ago, Hampton-Earl’s front door opened onto the pop of pistols and the hum of police helicopters overhead. There were no gardens, no parks. Hampton-Earl’s family lived in one of the 250 apartments at Ernie Cragin Terraces, a public housing complex scheduled to be turned into dust early next year. The single mother and her children are living through the biggest change in Las Vegas Valley public housing since the 1940s…”
Tag: Public Housing
Affordable Housing and Public Housing – Hawaii
State considers getting out of handling Hawaii public housing, By Mary Vorsino, November 11, 2009, Honolulu Advertiser: “The Hawaii Public Housing Authority is considering a radical solution to decades of backlogged repairs, aging projects and limited resources: selling properties or units and ending state oversight of public housing. The proposal, which officials stressed is still very preliminary, is part of a draft ‘vision’ before the housing authority board that includes ‘self-sufficient families living in units that they own that were previously public housing’ and the authority – the largest affordable-housing landlord in the Islands – ‘no longer in existence.’ The draft says the ‘public housing shelter model has been broken for 40 years’ and ‘having an ownership stake in their housing encourages people to take pride in their physical surroundings and become responsible for their future.’ Under the proposal, the agency would sell some units to tenants and also redevelop rental projects under a mixed-income model aimed at deconcentrating poverty while preserving affordability…”
Low-income Housing – New York City
As city adds housing for poor, market subtracts it, By Manny Fernandez, October 14, 2009, New York Times: “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is closing in on a milestone: building or preserving 165,000 city-financed apartments and houses for low-, moderate- and middle-income families, the goal of a $7.5 billion housing plan he announced in 2002 and expanded in 2005. It has already financed the creation or preservation of 94,000 units, including 72,000 for low-income households, city officials say. But those efforts have been overwhelmed by a far larger number – the 200,000 apartments affordable to low-income renters that New York City has lost over all, because of market forces, during the mayor’s tenure. The shrinking supply of these apartments, highlighted by researchers at New York University, illustrates not only the increasing strain that housing costs have had on this city of renters, but also the limits of the mayor’s success in providing the city’s poor with reasonable places to live…”