Reply #44: "too expensive to repair and maintain due to crime and indifferent tenants"

[Leopolds Ghost]

You could say the same about the levees. But, to reply:

* Government owns them, has money to maintain them. They are public weal.

The first sign of corruption is when a Housing Authority doesn't maintain buildings -- public property -- that WERE well-built.

Are the tenants responsble for replacing burnt out street lamps
and burying ugly, sub-standard electrical wiring?

* Housing agencies use explicit slumlord tactics to confront tenants
who are not "indifferent" by buying off association leaders, planting
ringers in tenant associations, and threatening outspoken tenants.
It's sad, it's corrupt, but true.

* Most HOPE VI developments occur in gentrifying areas,
WHEN gentrification is called for, and NEVER before,
no matter how "bad" they subsequently make us believe
those particular units are (which we had no cause to
think about unless we live nearby -- and most nearby
homeowners assns lobby against ALL public housing --
often at the request of an ultimatum from nearby developers
who "cannot" build their stadiums and office buildings
and nearby luxury housing otherwise (a matter of public record).

In other words, "we CAN'T increase property values and raise rents in
NON-public housing unless you tear down all the public housing nearby
and replace it with "mixed-income" (33% working class, 5% poor, with
subsidized units segregated from market rate units.)

HOPE VI has nothing to do with individual Cities' awareness of
what projects are architecturally unsound.

* indifferent tenants -- read: the city didn't want "dead beats"
to have the right to live there, especially to justify rehab
the "dead beats" (anyone without credit) HAD to go.

They can't MORALLY justify rehab if these people ("Welfare moms") in any way BENEFIT.
Getting them OFF THE ROLLS, "forcing them into the workplace" (where they already
are, BTW) is the metric of success.

You think suburbia is architecturally sound? What about the suburban cul-de-sac Clinton built in the Bronx, to illustrate the benefits of
HOPE VI?