City Council Accepts Offer of Cooperation from AHA

2.4.2008

Atlanta City Council accepts voluntary cooperation from Atlanta Housing Authority. In the resolution AHA promises to provide quarterly presentations to the CDHR committee and (2) public forums. They promise to delay the demolition of Bowen Homes and provide the demolition applications to the CDHR committee and offer continuing cooperation with the city.

This video courtesy of the City of Atlanta Channel 26.

City Council Overrides Veto of Public Housing Oversight

By Jonathan Springston and Matthew Cardinale, The Atlanta Progressive News (February 04, 2008)

(APN) ATLANTA – The City Council of Atlanta voted Monday, February 4, 2008, 10-5 to override Mayor Shirley Franklin’s veto of a resolution that asks the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) to consider putting on hold the demolition of Bankhead Courts, Bowen Homes, and Hollywood Courts, until the Council and the public have a chance to thoroughly examine demolition applications sent to US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The Full Council approved the resolution on January 22, 2008, but Mayor Shirley Franklin vetoed it on January 30, 2008.

Voting yea were Council Members Ivory Lee Young, Natalyn Archibong, Howard Shook, Clair Muller, Felicia Moore, C. T. Martin, Joyce Sheperd, Caesar Mitchell, Mary Norwood, and H. Lamar Willis.

The five votes against overriding the veto were Carla Smith, Kwanza Hall, Cleta Winslow, Anne Fauver, and Jim Maddox.

Ten votes had been required to override the veto. Had Mr. Willis not rushed in late, the resolution may not have passed, Moore told Atlanta Progressive News.

Mr. Young changed his vote from nay when the resolution was originally approved by Council, to yea on the override. Young originally supported the bill in CDHR Committee.

Ms. Fauver and Ms. Smith changed their votes from yea when the resolution was originally approved to nay on the override. The resolution had initially passed 11-1, with several Members absent or abstaining. Council President Lisa Borders did not vote either time.

Members of the CDHR Committee and others were particularly well informed about the issues after months of testimony from residents, advocates, and the public.

"There is no reason for the Mayor to have vetoed this resolution," Councilwoman Felicia Moore (District 9), author of the resolution, said.

Moore noted that a veto was not necessary because the resolution is not legally binding and the AHA could simply choose to ignore it.

Several members of the public spoke before the vote and urged the Council not to bow under executive pressure.

"My name was put on a document that was supposed to be signed for me not being at a January 9th meeting of the RAB Board, and... I left some literature for all Board Members to have that’s a retraction letter. My signature that was supposed to go on... it was put on something saying I said one thing when it wasn’t that," Elaine Olsby, President of Cosby Spears senior high rise told the Council.

AHA submitted to Council at its last meeting a letter signed by Olsby and others saying they supported the demolitions. However, as exclusively reported by Atlanta Progressive News, she states that AHA misled her as to what she was signing and did not give her time to read the letter. APN obtained a retraction letter from her today; Olsby has asked APN to send the letter to HUD.

"The Council has already made its position known," Joe Beasley, the Southeast Regional Director of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said. "I hope you will hold your ground."

Beasley accused the AHA of using "insidious moves" to remove Atlanta’s poor population outside the City. "There’s something wrong with that," he said.

"Every time AHA states that these residents are ready to go, that is not true," Diane Wright, President of Hollywood Courts resident association and the RAB Board, said. "I have 112 signatures from my community alone because they’re uncertain of where they’re going."

"All we’re asking for is a fair chance…to be able to sit down with the AHA to learn where we’re going."

"I really hope you will override the veto. I think deciding where thousands of people are gonna go or not go is too important for one person to sign off on. I think many more people need to be involved in that process. And in fact I think the money that’s being used to tear down and rebuild for people other than low-income people, that money needs to spent to fix up what’s available and to build more because we don’t have enough housing," Amy Hastey, Atlanta Jobs with Justice, said.

"Why wouldn’t we insist on a one-for-one replacement? That’s a local decision we can make. These are our local tax dollars, and we should at least get a one-for-one replacement, maybe a two-for one," Carl Hartrampf, Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said.

"We spent an hour today in meetings with the Mayor’s [Commission on Homelessness], to find housing for mothers and children, and yet we’re tearing down housing right now we could place those mothers and children in," he said.

"I want Renee Glover and Barney Simms, all them not to demolish the building, put the poor people out the community, like they did the Cheyenne, like the Ku Klux Klan was doing the Black people, running them out of the community. I want the Black folks to live in the community," "General" Larry Platt, resident of Palmer House senior high rise said.

SECOND RESOLUTION AFFECTS ALL DEMOLITIONS

The Council also voted to file a separate City ordinance crafted by Felicia Moore that seeks to give the Council more oversight of AHA initiatives.

While the Council voted to file the ordinance for now, Members unanimously signed off on a new resolution accepting to a process outlined by the AHA in two separate letters to Council.

Council Members had voted January 22, 2008, to table the ordinance, which the AHA had spoken out loudly against. They accused Moore of crafting such an ordinance to protect her own political standing.

The AHA also argued the Council had no jurisdiction over what the agency does, even when HUD requires consultation with all appropriate local government officials in demolition applications.

Both sides spent the past several days attempting to create a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiating several points.

Moore had initially been unsatisfied with an offer in the form of a letter by AHA’s director Renee Glover dated February 1, 2008, to hold two public forums on housing issues annually and submit quarterly reports to Council on its initiatives.

That letter had also promised to provide Moore with copies of the demolition applications for review three weeks before submitting them to HUD.

The second, dated February 4, 2008, extended that promise to providing the CDHR Committee with copies of any demolition applications.

"AHA will provide to CD/HR Committee of city council a draft copy of any proposed demolition/disposition application, that, when implemented, would result in the permanent relocation of the majority of the affected families from an AHA development, at least three weeks before AHA submits the application to HUD," according to a copy of the letter obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.

The letter went on to note that Moore would file her ordinance as a result of AHA’s voluntary actions.

Even though filing an ordinance essentially kills the bill, Moore told Council she would continue working on this issue until solid legislation passes.

"The Council has legal authority to set policy," Moore maintained. "We’re not through with this issue yet," she said in her remarks.

"I think there's still a long way to go in dealing with the issues that surround public housing," Moore told APN in a phone interview. "This is a small step. There's a lot of issues that need to be addressed... To make sure we have notice and opportunity for input, at least we got that for now."

About the author:

Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com. Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor for Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

It's time for the dogs to bite

On Saturday, January 26th, Miss Hightower spoke on the front steps of the Atlanta Housing Authority. The night before the police staged what was termed a routine inspection that over the course of a number of hours, escalated to the point where the police were trying to get into Miss Hightower's home and numerous residents had been arrested. She was speaking during the People's Movement Assembly, protesting the proposed demolition of Bowen homes.

How to protect your rights when dealing with the Atlanta Housing Authority

1. Make sure you understand anything you are asked to sign:

Illiteracy - if you cannot read please make sure to get someone that you TRUST to read out loud to you what you are signing. It is your duty, NOT the landlord's duty to make sure you understand what the lease or any amendment is saying

Confusion - if you are confused please get someone that you TRUST
to explain the lease or any other document to you.

Remember - it is OK to take the document or lease with you to get advice
before you sign it.

2. Ask plenty of questions.

3. Get all statements made by personnel that are contrary to the lease or any
documents you are asked to sign in writing;

DO NOT rely on what an employee tells you if you do not have it in writing. Remember it doesn't matter what they say; it matters what you are SIGNING!

4. Keep a good record of your transactions and interactions with your leasing office.

Example - if you consistently have paid your rent late, and the leasing office has never had a problem with it, make sure that you keep a record of that so that the landlord will not be able to evict you, suddenly, for late payment.

5. Do not take any offer given just because it sounds good; make sure you understand the
terms of the offer and seek legal advice if possible.

6. If you get a demand letter or an eviction notice please contact immediately
one of the following:

Atlanta Legal Aid Society at (404) 524-5811

Georgia Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty at (404) 681-0680

The Task Force for the Homeless has setup a hotline number (404) 230-5018 x166 for those who have been evicted or who are facing eviction from public housing in Atlanta. We're fighting to save public housing and we need your stories. Please call our hotline number and we'll setup an interview.

Encourage Yourself

Atlanta rethinks housing projects
Tami Chappell - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 21, 2008


Conswayla Gardner, left, with her daughters and Shirley Hightower at Bowen Homes, one of the last projects scheduled for demolition. According to a housing authority plan, they would not be able to return to the new development. Officials are to vote on razing the remaining low-income units for more revitalization. Some express doubts.

ATLANTA -- For more than a decade, a steady stream of housing officials and city planners from across the country have visited Atlanta to view the future of mixed-income housing.They tour sites such as Centennial Place -- where vast public housing blocks were torn down in 1994 to make way for a pioneering $150-million mixed-income community of garden apartments and town homes -- and then they go on to carry out similar projects in cities such as New Orleans and New York.

Despite Atlanta's reputation as a leader in rethinking public housing, City Council members are to vote Tuesday on whether to ask the Atlanta Housing Authority to delay demolition of three of its last remaining public housing projects.Some council members say they worry about where the projects' 3,800 displaced residents will go.

"People who live in these projects have no idea where they will end up," said City Councilwoman Felicia A. Moore, whose district includes the Bankhead Courts, Bowen Homes and Hollywood Courts projects. "Before these buildings are demolished, I want to be comfortable that they will find a home."The City Council's intervention could present an embarrassing setback for the Atlanta Housing Authority, which pioneered the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOPE VI program more than a decade ago. The agency has torn down more than 10,000 public housing units and plans to eliminate all of the city's public housing by 2010.

The housing authority has long maintained that warehousing the poor in vast complexes is a failed social experiment. Yet now, with 10 nationally acclaimed mixed-income projects under its belt, the agency faces the prospect of lengthy public forums with worried Atlanta residents, and legal disputes about how much authority the City Council has over the razing of public housing. Though there is little doubt that the sites of Atlanta's former projects have undergone dramatic revitalization -- property values have gone up and crime rates have gone down -- the issue is that few former public-housing residents actually live there. So far, about 17% of Atlanta's former public-housing residents have returned to the mixed-income communities, which are funded primarily by private investors. The vast majority are scattered across the region and use Section 8 housing vouchers to help pay their rent.

For Atlanta housing officials, this is a measure of success: The strategy of the program is to fight the "cycle of poverty" by breaking the concentration of poverty, said spokesman Rick White. Profoundly poor, unemployed public-housing tenants can improve their lives, the theory goes, if they are given the means to live in better neighborhoods.During the first phase of the program, former housing-project residents were given the right to return to the mixed- income communities. The majority of residents chose to take the vouchers, White said."It would have been a failure if everyone had returned," he said. "What we want to do is make sure families can make choices about where they want to live. Government bureaucrats are not telling them where to live. "Those who want to return must meet strict criteria and agree to regular house checks. In 2004, the agency required all able-bodied adults, 18 to 61, to have a job, receive job training or enroll in school. Residents cannot return if they have a history of falling behind on rent, or if they or any relatives on the lease have recent criminal convictions.Residents of the last-remaining projects would not have the right to return, and some council members say they are concerned that former project dwellers would end up shuffled to other poor, racially segregated areas. "We know revitalization is necessary to achieve investment, but redevelopment can't be done totally at the expense of senior citizens and low-income families," said Councilman Ivory Lee Young Jr., who is asking the City Council to set up a task force to study the housing authority's plan.Many worry that voucher holders would end up struggling to pay higher rents and utilities. Failure to pay bills can mean that residents drop out of the Section 8 system, with little chance of returning.The Atlanta Housing Authority closed the Section 8 waiting list several years ago, with more than 20,000 people on it.

Conswayla Gardner, 35, who supports seven children with a $7-an-hour cleaning job and struggles to buy items such as washing powder and toothpaste, said she simply could not afford higher rent or utility bills. She lives at Bowen Homes, a 1960s-era public-housing complex with two-story brick buildings that is among those scheduled to be torn down."I live from paycheck to paycheck, and I'm barely getting by," she said. "Am I going to end up homeless?"Among city planners and economists who track those who left the housing projects, there seems little consensus about the benefits of the program for low-income residents.

A national 2004 study by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution that monitored HUD's HOPE VI projects concluded that most voucher holders moved to better neighborhoods but that some still lived in poor, racially segregated areas, struggled to pay higher rent and utilities and battled with unreliable landlords. With the population of Atlanta's African Americans declining for the first time since the 1920s, public housing has become a sensitive political issue. Last week, housing authority Chief Executive Renee Lewis Glover sent a note of personal apology to Moore after a spokesman for Glover allegedly told the Atlanta Journal- Constitution that the councilwoman's objection to the demolition was motivated by fears that it would remove from her district voters likely to reelect her.

In August, a resident advisory board filed a civil rights complaint with the HUD, alleging that the Atlanta agency was pushing low-income blacks out of the city in violation of the Fair Housing Act. Shirley Hightower, president of the residents association at Bowen Homes, said the housing authority had not provided residents with opportunities to give input and had refused to comply with requests for public records."Residents stop me in my truck to ask questions, and the saddest thing about it is I don't have any answers," she said. "The housing authority hasn't really told us about anything. They don't care where the residents go. They don't care if we make it or not."