New York Times 3/21/08
Washington's Grand Experiment to Rehouse the Poor
Brendan Smialowski
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/21housing.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON - When District of Columbia officials tore down the
decrepit housing project in southeast Washington where Samantha
Jackson lived with her teenage son, they promised that they would
build a more attractive, mixed-income community and that former
tenants like herself could come back.
"It looks like Hollywood to me," said Samantha Jackson when
describing the new housing she'll soon be buying with the help of a
subsidy. She's a school custodian who lived in the former Arthur
Capper and Carrollsburg projects being replaced.
"I was very happy," recalled Ms. Jackson, 42, a school custodian.
"The area was rough and scary."
Ms. Jackson, who has been staying with a friend since the demolition
in 2004, is now in line to buy, with subsidies, a new apartment in a
town house in the same neighborhood, and she can hardly wait. "It
looks like Hollywood to me," Ms. Jackson said of the onetime slum
where glossy buildings and the Washington Nationals stadium are also
rising.
Bucking national trends and citing what they call "a moral goal,"
District of Columbia officials have pledged to preserve and even
expand low-income housing, replacing dangerous projects with new
communities that keep both poor and "work force" residents -
firefighters, teachers and laborers - in the mix.
The redevelopment of the Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg projects,
where Ms. Jackson lived, is the first in the country to promise
replacement of all low-income units within the same neighborhood,
said Michael Kelly, director of the city Housing Authority.
see link above for rest of article
--
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249 607-592-8402 Cell
"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
Mohandas Gandhi
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