City of Memphis has a well-earned national reputation for reinventing public housing, and because of it, it’s perplexing to watch the campaign to preserve Foote Homes, the last public housing project in Memphis.
It’s even amazing at times to listen to the Norman Rockwell rhetoric about public housing from defenders of the status quo for Foote Homes which is mixed with shots over the bow at public officials who disagree with them. That said, we don’t question the sincerity or the passion of the opponents to the city’s plan for the area, but it just feels so, well, 1960s-ish, particularly with its Saul Alinsky-style campaign.
Mr. Alinsky, the famous Chicago community organizer who became the guru of Sixties’ radicals, fought many campaigns for the people he called the “have-nots.” He still has his adherents, but for most of us, even those of us involved in these kinds of activities in the 1960s, this approach just feels stuck in time and ineffectual.
Most notably, a primary Alinsky strategy was to vilify the power structure, often the government, as the enemy, and in the pre-Civil Rights movement era, there was no denying that government was frequently the obstacle to fair play and equal opportunity. It was an approach built on conflict and a certain level of chaos, and in retrospect, two of its weaknesses were that it never seemed to know when it had won and in attacking what it treated as a monolithic power structure, it frequently alienated people in that power structure who were willing to be allies or sympathetic to their appeals.
Warehousing the Poor
We’re not saying that people attacking the planned rebirth of Foote Homes are necessarily Alinsky adherents, but the tone and the overheated rhetoric would make the old community organizer proud. Unfortunately, all of this obscures the importance of attacking Memphis’ serious poverty problems and to begin it with an end to the warehousing of poor people.
While opponents to the Wharton Administration’s plans for Foote Homes talk about destruction of a “neighborhood,” it is like no neighborhood we are familiar with. Its residents are isolated and surrounded by an invisible wall that holds them as captives in an environment of crime, severe unemployment, and dire need. There are few connections to art, meaningful community life, and to opportunity itself.
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has said that these old-style housing projects create “whole neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and segregation” and Brookings Institution’s leading urbanist Bruce Katz characterized them as “warehouses for the very poor.”
For us, if there is every an imperative for changing things, it is in asking ourselves if we know of any child who deserves to be raised in such conditions. More to the point, they start life with a stigma that becomes a serious obstacle to success in school and in life.
A Different Day and Time
There’s no denying that many public housing policies were born in a hot house of racism, neglect, and the political desire to put poor people where they could be watched. There was little emphasis on livability or creating a culture of opportunity. All in all, public housing overall has been an ignoble chapter in American human services and stands the American dream of a home on its head. It’s no wonder that none of our friends who grew up there romanticize the experience and want to do whatever it takes to prevent others from living there.
Back to the campaign against city government’s plan for Foote Homes, it has been said by an organizer that “this neighborhood has been demonized by those folks who have a private interest in seeing public money used to move a low-income neighborhood out and to redevelop this really in a gentrified manner.” It’s typical of the rhetorical over reach that has typified the debate about the plan for the Foote Homes neighborhood and belies the changes that make old-style organizing difficult in Memphis.
The most-used strategy is to pit poor against rich, black against white, and grassroots against government just ring hollow here. Today, things have changed: Memphis is a city with an African-American mayor, elected officials are majority African-American, African-American voters decide all political contests, and many of the programs to improve neighborhoods are funded by the so-called rich.
Records Success
Meanwhile, a study earlier this year concluded that although former residents of public housing do not see marked improvement in their quality of life when they move from public housing, they are nonetheless happier. “The bigger the change in poverty that you got through a move, the bigger the improvement in well-being and health,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University who has led the long-term evaluation. “
City of Memphis has been a national leader in HOPE VI – now Neighborhoods of Choice – projects that have transformed public housing and is held in high esteem among Washington HUD officials. Only a handful of cities – including some many times larger than ours – have gotten five HOPE VI grants, and with its last award, Memphis Housing Authority will have transformed public housing as we knew it little more than 15 years ago.
The five HOPE VI grants have provided $150 million to City of Memphis to remake public housing, but that amount has been leveraged several times with private and philanthropic support. Former Mayor Willie W. Herenton who led the navigation to land the five HOPE VI grants (before he was Shelby County or Memphis mayor, A C Wharton provided legal help for these projects) said that old-style housing projects were little more than government-created ghettos for poor people.
In truth, it’s difficult these days to find anyone who argues that massive public housing projects were smart social policy, because in concentrating the problems of poverty into compact, overcrowded environments, the web of poverty-related problems was merely amplified and intensified.
A New Melody
HOPE VI projects have served as physical symbols of how far Memphis Housing Authority (MHA) has come since 1992, when it was cited as one of the nation’s worst-run public housing agencies. It was the same year that Lauderdale Courts, whose Apartment 328 housed the family of aspiring singer Elvis Presley from 1949 to 1953, was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and Memphis’ first African-American mayor, Willie W. Herenton, took office.
The new mayor set two priorities for MHA – get off the HUD list and attract more federal money to his city. It’s no coincidence that changes in MHA leadership and success with HOPE VI applications ran parallel, because the close work between MHA and HUD to turn around the Memphis public housing agency led to the improved relationship and confidence level that became the foundation for a stepped up campaign for more funding.
It was not long after MHA got off the HUD list in 1995 that it received the first HOPE VI grant, and the attention to relationship-building paid off with more success – four more grants since 2000. Lemoyne Gardens became College Park, Lauderdale Courts became Uptown Square, Lamar Terrace became University Place, Hurt Village became Uptown Homes, and Dixie Homes is becoming Legends Park.
In each case, a public housing project that was “no man’s land” for anyone but its residents became a site for New Urbanist-influenced housing, and one in particular, Elvis’ former housing project became a national model for how public housing could be made more livable while preserving a prime example of New Deal architecture.
Tale of the Tape
Instead of the wrecking ball for Lauderdale Courts, it became a $36 million public-private redevelopment christened as Uptown Square. Unlike the other HOPE VI projects where all buildings were razed, only 95 of the original 442 Lauderdale Courts units were removed.
Overall, according to Memphis Housing Authority, 2,465 of 2,812 units in the five HOPE VI developments were demolished and 1,299 people were relocated. Of that number, 555 were relocated to other public housing, 522 used vouchers for new housing, and 222 relocated private-owned housing.
In the end, Memphis needs more than a rebranded HOPE VI. Rather, it needs good old –fashioned hope itself – hope for a cathartic discussion that moves from debates about symptoms of poverty – crime, teenage pregnancy, infant mortality, and low high school graduation rates – to a plan based more on action than analysis.
Little Rock has done a great job with public housing. Maybe instead of worrying about a resurgence of Little Rock, our “leaders” could look at what they’ve done.
Using Saul Alinsky should have it’s own designation like “Godwin’s Law”. It’s a turn off after the last election cycle.
The problems here make me wonder why it’s taken Memphis so long to fall this far after being removed as a Capitol City.
Too much agenda and not enough service going on here as an overarching paradigm created in fear in a conversation arguing for scarcity for a protracted period. Sorry, but, that’s what it looks like.
I do question ” the sincerity or the passion of the opponents to the city’s plan for the area”. The charge is being led mostly by individuals who do not live in Foote Homes- most of those involved do not live in the neighborhood but instead represent an intellectual and social elite (University of Memphis staff and neighborhood religious leaders). The fact that this group is more than willing to throw the residents of the neighborhood, the residents of Foote Homes and the city under the bus in order to fight what they see as an ineffective strategy being pursued at the federal level speaks volumes. Forgotten in their rhetoric are the desires and needs expressed by residents of the neighborhood who do not live in Foote Homes. This opposition group and we should remember that Foote Homes was dropped into that neighborhood- an artificial product that was largely unwanted by residents of the larger neighborhood and required the razing of an existing neighborhood defined by public streets serving private residences. Fitting that such projects were created amid the supportive rallying cries of the same intellectual and social elite who now- a generation later- wish it to remain as is.
It’s important to remember that when HOPE VI is employed, subsidized housing units are typically not replaced at a 1:1 ratio. Further, when residents of the public housing projects being destroyed are forced out during the demolition/construction phase, they are typically not guaranteed a unit in the new HOPE VI development. Thus, HOPE VI does create a certain type of anxiety and fear among public housing residents — and rightfully so. If I remember correctly, just a few years ago, Memphis’ own Phyllis Betts and Richard Janikowski wrote a (controversial) article for The Atlantic in which they expounded on some of the negatives associated with the demolition of public housing. It’s worth a read.
Note that I’m opposing HOPE VI in principle. I do think, however, that it’s perfectly reasonable for residents and those concerned about them to worry about their place–or lack of place–in a redeveloped neighborhood.
Change that last paragraph to this:
Note that I’m NOT opposing HOPE VI in principle…
It should be pointed out that the major critic of the Betts and Janakowski article has since published finding which confirm their original findings.
There are studies on both sides that are credible regarding the Betts/Janikowski suppositions.
Dr. Reardon has been respectful and professional in all the comments I’ve read of his. It’s quite possible that some in a large collaborative movement haven’t been, but he’s the de facto leader. His alternative appears to be a serious plan that already has Washington’s attention for the reasons that the Hope VI morphed into Choice Neighborhoods.
It would seem a big mistake at this point to ignore it based on slights or stylistic annoyances coming from the margins.
It would also be a big mistake for both groups to not work together collaboratively and probably with compromise to get Federal money.
Thanks for your always thoughtful comments, Gates. It’s a shame that when he was being paid by the city to develop a plan that he couldn’t make the most of that opportunity to merge all sides together and make the most of that unique position. Or at least that’s sentiment we hear from the campus.
Gates- uUnfortunately what they teach us as children- that compromise and team work will win the day- does not always apply and this may be one of those cases. Sometimes the resulting solution is still the wrong one. Here is the meat of it: (stylistic annoyances aside) Reardon’s approach and proposal calls for the renovation of the existing housing units at Foote Homes. The city has apparently been pursuing a plan which would replace the Foote Homes housing units- likely utilizing a traditional neighborhood pattern that fits with the surrounding neighborhood and would likely physically resemble other Hope VI projects in town. HUD (the Fed) has been very specific about their desire to replace existing public housing in an effort to de-concentrate the often isolated pools of poverty that they created with public housing projects throughout the 20th century that in turn decimated the neighborhoods around said projects. What HUD learned from Hope VI was that it is not enough to simply replace the existing projects. The surrounding neighborhoods have degraded too far to be able to rebound on their own in a free market system. So HUD expanded their scope to the neighborhoods beyond the boundaries of the public housing project itself in order to facilitate sustainable change and improvement. They will not look favorably on a plan that proposes renovating an existing housing project as it does not address the purpose of Choice Neighborhoods. Memphis will be competing with as many as 60 other cities for this funding. It is safe to say that 3 out of 4 of those applicants will not receive any funding. Preserving the units will fly in the face of HUD’s existing policy.
Excuse me if I’m not seeing much room for compromise. Dr. Rearden is at odds with HUD’s policy of replacing public housing with mixed-income neighborhoods- a paramount goal stated in the summary of the Choice Neighborhood program. He is asking that Memphis serve as a martyr in his cause. If the city agrees with his approach, then we must accept the fact that we will not receive any federal assistance via Choice Neighborhoods. Choice Neighborhoods is based on the foundation that public funds are leveraged to introduce private funds in creating neighborhoods that are attractive to those with diverse incomes and backgrounds. Simply renovating Foote Homes does not create an opportunity for private investment within the neighborhood. Instead we will be perpetuating the existing conditions within the neighborhood where poverty and all the ills that accompany it remain concentrated and the standard.
To accept Rearden’s alternative is to accept that the existing conditions found at Foote Homes and in the Vance Ave. Neighborhood will persist indefinitely.
If what we have is a HUD that doesn’t want to keep the old housing projects but also wants to fix the horrible rate of public housing resident repatriation and other dislocations, then neither HOPE VI as Memphis has done it to date nor Rearden’s plan would work.
A compromise would be removal of Foote Homes after relocating the residents _within_ the neighborhood rather than at some unspecified time in the future (i.e., something infinitely stronger than “working with the Governor”). The really bad rate of public housing repatriation and the fact that the FH residents don’t want to leave the neighborhood seems to be what gives the alternative power.
SCM, I think Director Lipscomb and the Mayor also have the power to merge the two.
“Slum clearance” is the operative term for Hope VI and Choice Neighborhoods – the policy to tear down multi-family public housing “slums” and replace them with less dense, mixed income, mixed style housing, a sort of gentrification of the public housing site and surrounding area.
In both 1937 (public housing) and 1949 (urban renewal) “slum clearance” was also the operative term for neighborhood uplift, and the biggest government response was the construction of dense multi-family rent subsidized housing units like Foote Homes, Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis and Cabrini Green in Chicago.
Under urban renewal many acres of “slums”, in stable neighborhoods, were cleared. The private market was then supposed to buy and develop the land to create higher, market driven values; but it didn’t happen and the land stayed vacant and public housing began to deteriorate.
The collateral damage from all of this was the destruction of “urban villages” with their strong friendship patterns and extended families. The relocation of former residents resulted in their being scattered, often to worse housing, isolated from each other, and they weren’t “happier”.
In time many of the multi-family projects formed new urban villages with some residents, who achieved increased prosperity, even paying full market rent because they didn’t want to move and leave friends behind. Only the neglect from local governments and housing authorities pushed these projects into states of physical and social disrepair.
This is the dilemma facing Memphis today. How to deal with a group of people who don’t want to move after being part of a real planning process and a city government that wants to gentrify the neighborhood using one of its stock plans. Where is the middle ground?
Gates: Didn’t Ken have the opportunity to merge the thinking when he was hired by the city to develop the plan?
FG-
In response to the role local government and housing authorities played in this debacle and the dilemma the city faces:
It is not quite that simple and in some ways places too much of the blame at the feet of local administration while terms such as gentrification and creating a mixed income community (depending on who you are talking to at the time) are in the eye of the beholder. Much of the distress we see in places like Foote Homes is direct result of two larger issues.
1) HUD’s contributions to maintenance and repair conducted by local governments and housing authorities has been decreasing for years. This is due in part to HUD’s desire to shift away from wholesale housing projects that serve to mass and isolate poverty to the detriment of their surrounding neighborhoods and the host community at large.
2) The projects you very insightfully referenced (as well as most others built across the country) never proved to be as cost effective and efficient as they were envisioned. Almost from the start, many of these developments required extraordinary funds to simply maintain the units in livable conditions. Thus we arrive at Dr. Rearden’s proposal for a renovation of Foote Homes that will cost tens of millions of dollars only a decade after a similar renovation was undertaken of the same units.
Basically renovations are not sustainable unless the funding is available to maintain the improvements that are made. HUD is no longer providing that level of funding to local housing authorities resulting in the choice of redeveloping the properties according to HUD’s rules or dedicating additional local funds (taxes) to these sites. Finally there is the issue of the larger neighborhood around Foote Homes. The residents of that neighborhood in many cases are not particularly fond of Foote Homes and the issues that are associated with it. It may not be fair to relocate the existing residents of Foote Homes (even if it is to locations within the Vance Avenue Neighborhood), but it is equally unfair to damn the surrounding neighborhood and residents to remain trapped in the same quagmire that is a direct result of the concentrated and entrenched poverty found at Foote Homes.