Atlanta has played a leading role in the changes nationwide in the public housing arena. Atlanta was the first city to tear down all of its public housing and replace it with mixed income housing. There has been a lot of debate about how effective these changes have been. Here is a link to an interesting article on Atlanta's Housing Authority, and the ways they are hoping to transform the culture of public housing in Atlanta. http://city-journal.org/2010/20_4_atlanta-public-housing.html.
~Jannan Thomas, DOOR Atlanta City Director
1 comment:
We are the ones who are doing the public housing relocation study that Mr. Husock mentions in his article. The AHA has done a lot of good things. But it is important to keep in mind that those former public housing residents who move with voucher (as opposed to being lucky enough to get into one of the new mixed income HOPE VI developments) typically move to neighborhoods that are equally racially segregated and only modestly less poor than the public housing ones they left. So the implications of Mr Husock's articles are misleading: even with case management the opportunities for access to upward economic mobility for the former public housing residents are very limited. Mr. Husock seems to imply that everything is about "the culture of poverty". But it is not. We have very persistent structural barriers in this country that are geographically based.
Sincerely,
Deirdre Oakley
Georgia State University
doakley1@gsu.edu
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