Columbus Housing Justice

Raquel Rolnik, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Housing, is in the United States this week to investigate the US housing crisis. As members of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Columbus Housing Justice submitted the following written testimony about the demolition of pulic housing in Columbus, OH.

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COLUMBUS HOUSING JUSTICE – COLUMBUS, OHIO

The Problem

In the face of an economic and foreclosure crisis, when the need for affordable housing has never been greater, the city of Columbus is planning to demolish or sell nearly one half of its public housing stock by 2013. The loss of 1,559 units out of the current 3,425 unit total is estimated to affect 4,365 people.

The city plans to relocate the bulk of residents to private-market housing using Section 8 vouchers, though some will be transferred to remaining public housing complexes.

Current residents of public housing slated for demolition have no option to stay in their current housing, and many complain of being given very little detail about their residential fates.

While authorities promote the Section 8 voucher program’s ability to give residents choice over their housing, this ostensible benefit also carries heavy costs that put at risk the human right to safe and secure housing.

First, many residents will have to relocate to areas that are far from their current jobs, access to public transportation, and other downtown amenities. The communities to be demolished or sold are overwhelmingly in the central city area. In contrast, the bulk of landlords who accept Section 8 vouchers are located in outlying areas. Residents who cannot find Section 8 housing downtown, and especially those who do not have cars, will face increased commutes and serious transportation crises that will put their jobs and livelihoods at risk.

Map: HUD multi-family assistance and Section 8 projects by number of units, Columbus OH



Source: Columbus and Franklin County Consolidated Plan 2010-2014

Second, Section 8 housing is significantly less secure than public housing. Columbus already has a waiting list of 9,885 people for Section 8 vouchers. At the same time, the overall supply of Section 8 units is decreasing, down 11,423 units since 1999. It is no help to newly homeless residents of public housing to receive vouchers if there are not enough private units to house them, and if that supply is only decreasing over time. Also, unlike public housing, Section 8 is designed as temporary, rather than long term housing assistance. People are much more likely to lose their Section 8 voucher due to increased compliance and re-certification requirements, expiration, and budget cuts. As the saying goes “it is a lot easier to tear up a voucher than tear down a building.”

Columbus Housing Justice, a member of PPEHRC, sees these changes in public housing as part of the larger process of exclusion and gentrification in Columbus. The majority of complexes set for demolition and private development lie on valuable downtown land. Abandoned in earlier decades by wealthier (and whiter) Ohioans, the city and private interests now want to develop these sites for the use of that same demographic group. This requires the exclusion and relocation of the poor whites and people of color that inhabit downtown public housing. 88% of public housing residents are people of color, and all have low to very low incomes. This number includes a high number of Somali refugees (Columbus has the second highest Somali concentration of any American city).

Fighting Back

Columbus Housing Justice believes that the destruction of downtown public housing constitutes the destruction of valuable historical landmarks, cultural enclaves, and community ties among the poor.

To fight the loss of these communities and protect the human right to housing, CHJ is organizing residents of the city’s largest public housing community (Poindexter Village) to articulate demands for greater information, control over their destinies, and the preservation of public housing stock in downtown Columbus. Our efforts are slowly expanding to include residents of Riverside-Bradley, another public housing community.

Poindexter Village, a 432 unit community, was built in 1932. It was one of the first three public housing projects in the country and was inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was built on the former site of the “Blackberry Patch”, a shanty-town that was home to many poor southern blacks who migrated north through the turn of the century. After its construction, Poindexter Village continued to be a hub of southern black culture in Columbus. The community takes its name from a famous local slave abolitionist, and one of the city’s world-renowned artists, Aminah Robinson, grew up in Poindexter and drew on its rich cultural legacy to make her artwork.

Poindexter Village, First Families in 1940 by Aminah Robinson

CHJ has formed a residents’ group in Poindexter that will hold its first Town Hall Meeting in December to begin articulating a list of demands to the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. We have also submitted video testimony to the Columbus City Council, critiquing the city’s consolidated plan for its lack of concern for the housing rights of the poor.

This video testimony can be viewed online here:

Testimony of Laura Tompkins, of Columbus Housing Justice

Testimony of Lorraine Astrop-Scroggins, Riverside-Bradley resident

Testimony of Danielle Lawrence, Poindexter Village resident

Testimony of  Sherry & George Truex, Poindexter Village residents

This is a follow up to our last post, speculating that Columbus risks following the same misguided  path towards low income housing as Cincinnati if trends continue. Looks like residents there are fighting back – let’s take this as inspiration!

press release: “Residents of Metropole Apartments Speak”

September 26, 2009

On Thursday, September 24th, The Cincinnati Enquirer published an article exposing the ongoing negotiations concerning the future of the Metropole Apartments, located at 609 Walnut Street in Cincinnati’s Central Business District. On Friday, September 25th, The Business Courier offered a more substantial report on the issue: the current owners of the Metropole Apartments are in the process of selling the building – and as its perspective owner, 3CDC plans on converting the historical apartment building into a boutique hotel and displacing the current residents. Commenting on the issue were several key players. James Cunningham, Field Office Director for HUD’s Cincinnati Office, Jeff Ruby, restaurant owner, Josh Spring, Executive Director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, as well as Councilmember Chris Bortz, of Towne Properties. Still, both articles lacked the most important voice on the issue: the current tenants of the Metropole Apartments. The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless stresses that this is not because the tenants have nothing to say, but instead they have not been asked – by current owner Showe Management, by 3CDC, by Jeff Ruby, or by Councilmember Chris Bortz. In fact, concerns about the building’s future prompted the residents of Metropole to start the Metropole Tenants Association (MTA) months ago. The primary objective of MTA is to ensure that the rights of the tenants are upheld, and that their voices are heard in relation to the future of their home.

At a meeting of MTA, tenants demanded that their voices be heard and expressed resentment toward the way that their home is being depicted in the media. Specifically, several tenants responded to Jeff Ruby’s unfounded assertion that “You can’t have those types of places across the street from the Aronoff Center. It’s like parking a Bentley on 14th and Main and expecting the Bentley to still be there” and The Cincinnati Enquirer’s focus on past police raids. Chris Cook, a tenant of Metropole for 2 years, insists that Jeff Ruby needs to look at the actions of his own customers. “I am not junkie,” stated Cook, “I don’t like the drunks coming out of Jeff Ruby’s [restaurants]. I live in the front of the building on the fourth floor, and the music and noise that come from the bars keep me up until 3:00am. I live there. THEY DON’T. If anybody has a right to complain, it’s me!” Another tenant says that “The Metropole has had a 100% turn around from a few years ago. It’s the local bars causing 90% of the noise. Mr. Ruby needs to keep his customers inside the bars and not outside smoking and barfing on our sidewalks.” Several tenants at the meeting expressed the same sentiments. During the meeting, members of MTA frequently spoke to the different sets of rules being applied to people on the block. Residents pointed to the fact that Metropole tenants are not even allowed to stand in front of their building, while bar-goers can sit outside and get drunk without a word from police. One MTA representative referred to the bars’ patrons as “alcoholics”.

Others said that Councilmember Chris Bortz – who has a marked business interest in the area – should check his facts before expressing his opinion to the media. In the Enquirer article, Bortz stated that there are shared bathrooms for tenants in the Metropole. However, MTA wishes to inform Bortz that no such shared bathroom exists within the building. In regards to the issue at hand, however, MTA has been persistent on its position on the conversion of the Metropole Building into a boutique hotel. That is, they will not allow it. What Showe Management and 3CDC must understand is that the building at 609 Walnut is not just a building – or a needed acquisition to complete the “Backstage Entertainment District”. It is a home. While 3CDC and all other stakeholders may say that they care about the tenants and will try to relocate them, relocation is simply out of the question for the representatives of MTA. In fact, when surveyed about why the Metropole is good for them, every single respondent cited the centralized location of the building.

When asked, “What can be done?”, one MTA member replied without hesitation, “Stay.”

Throughout the meeting, the Metropole Tenants Association made their strength and resolve abundantly clear. When asked for a couple of sentences detailing their position on 3CDC’s proposed conversion of their homes, the response was unanimous: “Look Elsewhere. We want to stay.”

Cincinnati has demolished a great deal of its public housing in recent years, with pretty terrible results. As the city moved tenants to subsidized private housing in farther-flung areas, the neighborhoods poised to receive them began fighting tooth and nail to keep them out. Then the city started to cut subsidies, leaving former public housing residents high and dry, unable to afford shelter in already hostile neighborhoods. (As they say, it is a lot easier to eliminate a line item on a budget than tear down a building).

Many in Columbus are worried that this is the dark road our city will be headed down if it goes forward with plans to demolish or sell 6 of its public housing complexes. (As we already reported, Sawyer Towers and Lincoln Park are now in the hands of high end condo developers).

As the most recent events in Cinci attest, we can’t even assume that privately built projects in valuable downtown areas will stick around to house those who lost their public housing.

The Metropole building, a 230 unit complex in downtown Cincinnati that caters to residents on subsidy, is now talking with developer 3CDC to turn the building into a boutique hotel.

As Councilman Chris Boraz notes in Thursday’s Cincinnati Enquirer, the building is:

“very outdated, the units are very small and you have shared bathrooms for tenants,” Bortz said. “We can do a better job of providing affordable housing in our community,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of positive activity in that area, and this building is another piece, if it can be recaptured and put to a better use. That is, of course, presupposing you can effectively relocate those tenants that are currently there.”

We’ll set aside the awful conflation of “providing better affordable housing in the community” with moving residents out to revamp their current housing for luxury use…. The story goes on to note that no public offer has been made, and that the sale would still require a consult by HUD. But overall, things continue to look grim for low income folks in Cincinnati. And housing development decisions continue to be made on the basis of profitability first, with the interests of current residents being an afterthought.

Does Columbus really want to go this route?

We don’t think so. Let’s support better plans for housing our low income residents, like saving Poindexter Village.

From the Boston Globe, Aug 16 2009:

The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities.

The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate- income families at affordable rates.

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The $4.25 billion set aside for the creation of rental housing will come from $14 billion that HUD has received from the federal economic stimulus package. Another $4 billion of the money will be used to fix up the nation’s existing public housing stock of 1.2 million units.

After a long battle, Rosemary Williams, 60, was evicted from her Minneapolis home, but protesters quickly moved in to reclaim it.

Authorities moved Friday to evict a Minneapolis woman who staged a months-long, public fight to stay in her foreclosed home. Rosemary Williams, 60, was ordered to leave the house by several Hennepin County sheriff’s deputies. They changed the locks and locked the doors. But soon after they left, a group of activists broke into the house and opened it back up. Dozens of activists descended on the house, in the 3100 block of Clinton Avenue, to protest the eviction and help Williams move her belongings. They lugged suitcases, bags of clothes and a television set to their cars.

http://www.startribune.com/local/52713662.html?page=1&c=y

VTT Management has stepped up as a buyer for two Columbus public housing projects: Sawyer Towers and Lincoln Park.

Here is an excpert, but you can read the full article at the Dispatch:

Theodorakos is offering $2 million for the twin high-rise Sawyer Towers just east of Downtown and $2.2 million for Lincoln Park on the South Side, said CMHA Executive Director Dennis Guest.

According to the company’s Web site, VTT “specializes in the acquisition, revitalization and management of undervalued and distressed real estate.”

But Theodorakos apparently isn’t looking for subsidies, Guest said. His understanding is that the apartments would be renovated and offered at market rates.

If that’s the case, then any sale likely would not affect CMHA’s plan to empty the complexes and give residents Section 8 vouchers so that they can rent privately owned places. Sawyer Tower residents already are in the process of moving.

You can also investigate VTT Management online at their website.

“Our Mission: To Eliminate Urban Blight, One City at a Time!”

In practice, this means moving the public housing residents out, re-vamping the buildings into “exclusive residences” (language from VTT website), and selling them at market rates to folks following the trend towards a downtown lifestyle. Gentrification in process….

Sawyer Towers

Check it out.  Someone wrote about our presentation at the Hootenany. A sample excerpt:

Columbus Housing Justice joins other groups such as South Florida’s Take Back the Land in confronting the fundamental need and problem of housing in our own backyards. And they aren’t the only ones looking inwards to solve problems. In today’s age, perhaps some of the most progressive issues involve, not necessarily starving children in Africa (although global hunger is indeed a problem, and one exacerbated by the global systems countries such as ours have put in place), but supposedly radical issues such as how to feed ourselves locally and sustainably. – IntoTheFray blogger Lara Heintz

Check out this great article by Peter Marcuse in Shelterforce: the journal of affordable housing and community building about HUD’s misguided and underfunded policies in trying to ameliorate the housing crisis.

I hate to write these words—but President Bush was right.

Speaking on Wall Street just before the G20 meeting, he said: “The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system.”

Indeed. The crisis was not a failure of the system; it is how the system works. And the answer is not to reinvent the system, but to reject it and try something new.

Marcuse makes the important point that the housing crisis was not a systemic failure, but yet another instance of the system working the way it is supposed to.  It just so happens that the way the system works is by screwing working people – by squeezing any extra wealth out of us, leaving us broken, indebted, and dependent on low-wage jobs.

Commodification of housing, however, is in a different category: It is the underlying problem. Commodification is the conversion of housing from something that provides shelter, protection, privacy, space for personal and family activities into something that is bought and sold and used to make money.

Part of the reason for the subprime mortgage crisis is the privatization of public housing that has occurred over the past three decades.  In five years, between 1978 and 1983, the HUD budget shrank 75% – from $83 to $18 billion.  Thanks Reagan!  Over the years, as public housing became dilapidated and cut the number of available vouchers, funding for housing programs was shifted to home ownership – tax relief for homeowners and federal support to low-income lenders like Freddie Mac and Fannie May.   This shift of burden for housing from public to private happened at the same time as real wages began to stagnate or decline in the US, yet the costs of housing prices and necessities like education and healthcare began to skyrocket, making households more and more dependent on debt.

Marcuse’s solution is simple: HUD should directly buy cheap and foreclosed properties and make them available as public housing.  They already have the capacity – the administrative infrastructure they need to manage thousands of properties.  He further advocates for experimentations in tenant control over these properties, which could manifest in the form of housing cooperatives, tenant unions, and community land trusts.

Yet, in the midst of a housing crisis, when millions of Americans face foreclosure and the possibility of homelessness, HUD is pursuing a policy of demolishing public housing units and further privatizing housing support.  At the same time, in Columbus, Ohio, the average wait time for a Section 8 voucher is 5 years, and that list is currently closed to new applicants.

Now there is an opportunity for the federal government to commit to an ongoing major public investment in the housing of its people. It clearly has the resources to do so—if it can make $29 billion available to back Bear Stearns, it can provide $85 billion for AIG, the $5.2 trillion liability taken on with GSEs, etc. bringing the investment in housing from $4 billion to $40 billion would be a drop in the bucket of federal expenditures. Use the funds provided to socialize the profit in the housing supply system. The balance between private for-profit ownership of housing and social ownership should be shifted dramatically in favor of the latter.

Exactly.  With trillions in bailouts for banks, where is the federal funding for public housing?  Why is that support which is provided allocated to the private market that created the crisis in the first place???

Morgan and I recently gave an interview about Columbus Housing Justice to some friends researching grassroots groups. As I tried to give the interviewer a quick picture, I said something like “well, we take a more radical approach” in the middle of my description.

A few minutes later she revisited this, asking: “Before you described yourselves as ‘radical’. What does that mean to you? I guess when I think of ‘radical’ I think of socialists, anarchists, bombs …”

As Morgan and I developed the idea with her it seemed something worth explaining here on the blog as well. What we said, with some added detail here, was:

Well on socialism and anarchism – we don’t fly a particular ideological banner. So while individuals who volunteer with our group might identify as such, we welcome anyone interested in housing as a human right. We certainly don’t throw bombs. (And neither do most socialists or anarchists for that matter – big misconception. Though we could name many Democrats and Republicans…)

We use the word radical, first and foremost, to immediately signal that we are not your typical housing or non-profit group. What’s different about us, radical we would say, are essentially three things.

First, our structure. CHJ is non-hierarchical, meaning we don’t have a leadership or staff pyramid, and that responsibilities are shared horizontally. Monthly group meetings are run by a rotating volunteer facilitator, and projects are “bottom-lined” by any members who are willing to take final responsibility for making sure that the group moves forward on a given project. (See more at Points of Process).

Second, our method. CHJ does not restrict itself to the role of “service provider” or “advocate”. These entail a division between ‘us’  and ‘them’ that we reject (‘us’ being the organization, which gives handouts and speaks on behalf of others, and ‘them’ being the recipients of handouts and the voiceless who need spoken for). People from all walks of life, especially those harmed by housing injustice, are welcomed as members and leaders to the group. Together we can make sure our needs are met, our voice is strong, and our cause is advanced.

Third, our founding vision. We believe that housing is a birthright of all people, and that residents hold a collective right to direct control over the spaces where they live and work. We aim to create a Columbus where this is true in practice. This is a surprisingly rare, and thus radical, founding concept for a housing group. So rather than “optimization”, “increased provision”, “preservation”, or “assistance”, our programs are always grounded in a deliberate vision of transformation. (See more at Points of Unity).

So if you care about housing, come join our radical cause!