Stop the Demolition

When you hear words like "facelift" and "public housing" together, please pause.  Although many cities and housing advocates have the best of intentions, and the problem of "concentrated poverty" is an issue to be addressed, the post-Katrina Gulf Coast experience is an egregious example of what happens when we continue to knock down more affordable units than we build back up.

“The intractable problem continues to be a lack of affordable housing.”

Gulf Coast recovery after the 2005 and 2008 storms is anemic due to abysmal bureaucracy; failed, arguably criminal government leadership; inadequate funding; and a burdensome overreliance on a commendable civil society to make up the difference.

Rental stocks are destroyed, area rents are way up, and investments in housing redevelopment are woefully insufficient. People’s lives are at risk from prolonged displacement in toxic surroundings.

So remind me again why we’re using the 2005 and 2008 hurricanes as further license to demolish public housing? Why haven’t we learned from the national crisis of affordability among the very low-income? Someone working full-time at minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom at fair market rents anywhere in the U.S. Why aren’t we restoring public housing operating budgets, connecting eligible residents to public assistance programs, and increasing housing assistance to low-income families, the elderly and disabled?

It’s not just Bush and the GOP driving Clinton-era, demolition-centric policies. Housing advocates and anti-poverty activists endorse this approach. Policies originate in the problems of severely distressed public housing documented in 1989 at the end of the Reagan Administration. Crime has fallen in most cities nationwide while housing shortages have risen. So should we really continue to demolish, not rehabilitate, tens of thousands of units of deeply subsidized housing annually?

This urban planner says no.