ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 11, 1996 TAG: 9610110085
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
THE ROANOKE Redevelopment and Housing Authority has lost out in its bid for $13 million in federal money to remake the Lincoln Terrace public-housing community, but public-housing officials here say they haven't given up their efforts.
The plan, they say, represents an attempt not only to improve Lincoln Terrace physically but also to boost the prospects of upward mobility for tenants of the public-housing units.
That's a good goal, federal money or no.
Roanoke will be one of 74 cities to share in $716 million in grants announced this week by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the city is to get only $1 million, for relocating temporarily displaced families during the Lincoln Terrace upgrade.
Other methods of financing the $20 million project are being explored, and local public-housing officials say they may reapply for a share in the next round of HUD housing-improvement grants, to be announced in May 1997. Meanwhile, the focus is to be on the first phase of the plan.
The plan reflects both a return to an old idea and fresh thinking about public housing. The old idea is that, for able-bodied people and their families, public-housing dependency should be a temporary answer to ill fortune rather than a permanent way of life. This is a goal that goes back to the beginnings of America's public-housing programs.
The fresh thinking, a result of public housing's frustratingly frequent failure to boost tenants toward self-sufficiency, is that simply the provision of four walls and a roof isn't enough. Not only were there inadequate incentives and opportunities for advancement, but in some ways - the typically bleak architecture, for example - public housing discouraged it.
There are plenty of individual success stories among public-housing families, and public housing in Roanoke has long been regarded as far better than in America's big-city concrete jungles. Even in Roanoke, though, public housing and its residents tend to be isolated from the mainstream.
Vouchers in general offer greater promise than traditional, concentrated public housing. And it may seem contradictory to call for greater neighborhood stability - with porches and picket fences, partnerships with existing service agencies, a mix of renters and home-owners and a diversity of income levels - when you're trying to make public housing more temporary.
But the authority in fact is on to something in recognizing that home ownership can mean upward mobility within a neighborhood.
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