Privatizing public housing in Chicago.

[Are_grits_groceries]

CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.
<snip>

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/

This is a very long article that looks at what happened when a public housing plan backed by Obama and his allies was implemented in Chicago.
Unless some of the problems found there are going to be directly addressed by the new public housing proposal, then it should be reworked if considered at all.

I'm sure I will be called anti-Obama or something. However, every proposal doesn't deserve to be given clean sailing I don't care who presents it. There is a history here of what went very wrong in Chicago. Either address those problems specifically in the new proposal or it's not worth it.

[Catshrink]

1. It's a pattern

Obama and Arne Duncan are trying to take their privatization model for education they foisted on Chicago national.

[msongs]

2. privatize the assets, socialize the debt - more change we can believe in lol nt

[KharmaTrain]

3. It's Been Happening In Chicago For Years...

The problem was the massive failure of the CHA...its corruption that led to the complete restructuring of public housing in Chicago and Illinois. It's been ongoing for over a decade...this report really isn't new.

You need to understand the sorrid history of Public Housing and housing in general for the poor to realize how bad things were and how difficult it is to find a way to clean up this situation. In the 60s, the answer were high rises like Cabrini-Green that turned into deathtraps...since then the move has been to low rise complexes mixed around the area. This involves dealing with private companies to build and then maintain these places. The problem is that many of those who live in low income housing are stuck in a nasty cycle of ongoing poverty. There are precious few jobs and there is a large transient population that have no interest in ownership and thus abuse these properties, leaving it to the subcontractor to fix up. All's well and good if there's federal and state money, but when those wells go dry, like they have in the past couple years, so does the upkeep in these places.

The plan in Chicago was rolling long before President Obama came on the scene and was based on years of negotiations not only between city, state and federal but a lot of community groups as well. It's a tough nut to deal with especially in tough economic times. Unfortunately public housing run by cities have proven to be a failure as its turned into a political football and patronage game. If someone has a better way, I'm sure there are a lot of ears in Chicago that would gladly listen.

[donco6]

4. There's no quick profit when you're required to keep up with capital improvements.

Thus no incentive for privatising. It should be simple to see.

It's the same with private electrical generation corps. They're good ad the daily operations and collecting utility payments. But ask them to invest profit in upgrading the grid? FERGIT IT! They'll ask for government funding for that.

[chill_wind]

5. The War Spending tab for taxpayers in Chicago- $11 Billion

since 2001.

79,419 Affordable Housing Units. Or a whole lot of money to otherwise fix such problems as these and so much more:

".. collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition."

SO much more.

We could have the money for adequate shelter and housing for all of our citizens. It's just not the priority.

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/tradeoffs?location_type=4&state=17&town=0.010468129000000000000000000000&program=585&tradeoff_item_item=279&submit_tradeoffs=Get+Trade+Off

[Cleita]

6. To play devil's advocate here, public housing doesn't seem to work out

very well for the reasons you state. Cities and other governments are often poor landlords. What did work out in Los Angeles County, until Proposition 13 changed the housing landscape and did it's damage, was that the county paid for apartments and housing for people on welfare in ordinary middle class and working class neighborhoods. So this way welfare recipients were scattered throughout the city in ordinary apartment buildings. I often had neighbors who were on welfare, usually single mothers that had been abandoned by their husbands. I don't like Obama's idea of subsidizing a private industry though to run welfare housing. It's as bad as privatizing the prisons and shouldn't be allowed in either instance.

[Gormy Cuss]

9. But public housing did and does all over the country. The places that work don't make the news.

By work, I mean they offer low cost housing in better condition than private market housing in the same communities or offer the only affordable option. Section 8 and the state/local equivalent programs designed to subsidy rents in other units work only when there is a surplus of privately-owned rental units (which is probably why you saw a difference after Prop. 13 became law and changed the dynamics of property ownership here.)

The very large, high density public housing developments built between the 1930s-1950s have disappeared in most areas and have been replaced by lower density developments still managed by public agencies. That's why the sell-off of CHA properties raised eyebrows. The problem wasn't public ownership, it was inept/corrupt ownership and that can happen with private ownership as well. As the article mentions, there was a strong economic incentive for the city to convert places inside Loop into properties generating tax revenue, and moving poor people away from public view tends to play well with middle class voters.

[Cleita]

10. I definitely wouldn't want public housing to be turned over to private

ownership. The poor need protection from that kind of greed. Also, the poor need to be among us in all our neighborhoods. After all they are the ones who work on the estates of the rich. There should be a law that each neighborhood has some subsidized or public housing for the poor and the poor working class in it. I don't believe the middle and upper classes have a right to the "out of sight; out of mind" mentality.

As far as my suggestions, it's true it was the surplus of privately owned rental units that made the other system work. Another way, maybe would be for apartments owners and hotels to be forced to have 10% of their units for low income people as a condition of maybe lower property taxes, something like that to incentivize them.

[reggie the dog]

12. our low rise public housing works much better than our highrise

public housing here in France, there are also many who live on subsidies so they can live in private units in non public housing in average neighborhoods (usually the working poor)

[Gormy Cuss]

13. Low rise works better than high rise for any families with children. Seniors do well in high rises.

There are many low rise public housing developments pre-1960 in the US and they generally were more successful in terms of livability for family groups. Privately owned units with subsidized rents have been a successful option for many tenants too, but the shift in policy which began in earnest in the late 1970s when tenant-based Section 8 rental assistance became the new focus of housing for low income people. On a national level the rental market has never had sufficient units available, yet rather than get back into the production of public housing units HUD policy was moved more towards this vehicle and home ownership programs as if the latter would close the gap.

[Bitwit1234]

7. So and the discrimination will start.

[pinto]

8. Not sure what the model is in Chicago. In my county (CA), a private, non-profit

owns and manages low income / Sec. 8 housing. It's their sole function and their only specialty. They get some government grants, some private grants and some endowment income. They've built units, bought and rehabbed older units and taken over (bought) units from private owners who wanted out of the rental biz. Much smaller scale - which may be the key - yet it seems to work well. Units are all well kept, annual inspections are completed and the units are always full - in fact there's a waiting list.

[Cleita]

11. Well, I believe your county is my county and that has been

abused in our county as well. One woman with acreage up the road, rents a half dozen, substandard and broken down trailers on the same Sec. 8 program to people who are very needy. One young girl with children has no teeth and she has mental problems besides. Others are seniors who are living on very low income. Last month we had a minor drama of one of the women with a child, who has a job, incidentally, had asked for her non functioning toilet to be replaced. The landlady gave her thirty days to move out. Some of the neighbors got together and pressured this landlady to replace the plumbing after they took up a kitty amongst them to pay for it on condition that she didn't evict the tenant.

There is no point in asking for inspections because, in the past she has thrown out her tenants, done some minimal repairs and was back in business again. In the meantime I found one of the former tenants downtown who had become homeless after one of her purges because someone had complained to authorities.

btw in the place you are talking about, where are the people on the waiting list living in the meantime?