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“very outdated, the units are very small and you have shared bathrooms for tenants,” Bortz said.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.
…
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.
