THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 21, 1995 TAG: 9503210004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Nobody - or so it seems - likes public housing. Living in the ``projects'' is a stigma. Residents feel it, resent it. All of America's urban pathologies tend to blossom in public housing: welfare dependency, teen pregnancy, low achievement in and out of the classroom, illicit drugs, violence, disease, despair. Outsiders look at projects with fear and loathing.
What to do? Republicans want the projects to disappear. They favor programs designed to move tenants out of them. They seek to expand use of vouchers that enable many of the poor to find shelter in the private sector. Vouchers are indeed a promising alternative with the potential for dispersing the poor instead of forcing them into ghettos. But some families are so impoverished that they cannot afford to rent free-market housing even with the aid of vouchers. Public housing remains a necessity for all too many Americans.
Nonetheless, it comes as no surprise that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted last week to cut billions - $7.2 billion - for public-housing programs from the federal budget. Consternation over the cut is limited mainly to municipal and public-housing-authority officials and activists among public-housing tenants.
America's social turmoil would multiply if public housing abruptly disappeared. That's not the prospect, thank goodness. But if the House of Representatives' cut stands, inner-city woes - already terrible - will intensify, adding to the burdens of already strained social-welfare services and police, courts and corrections.
Norfolk's public-housing programs will lose $3.9 million of a current $11 million in federal funds if the cut becomes law. Portsmouth will lose $1.9 million; Suffolk, $200,000. Local officials say the reduced funds would impair management, maintenance and renovation of existing housing parks.
Other cuts approved by the House of Representatives would make matters worse: reductions of $1.7 billion nationally for summer jobs for youths, $1.3 billion for energy aid to low-income households and $416 million for the National Service Program that provides worthwhile job experience for thousands of poor young people. Drug-prevention programs would be damaged as well. Republicans argue that such programs have not banished urban ills. They are correct. But sharply cutting their funding isn't like to establish domestic tranquillity, either, or even produce real savings for taxpayers.
Danny Cruce, executive director of Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority, warns of the cuts: ``Public housing across the country will gradually, but severely, deteriorate and become slums and become an even more comfortable environment for drugs and criminal activity.''
That surely is the risk. Public-housing is unpopular now. But public housing growing ever shabbier would be even more so. Make no mistake: Public housing is far from ideal. But scrapping it or letting it perish of neglect without providing acceptable options for the poor would impose some very frightening costs upon society - more frightening than society bears now. Caution flags are flying. Ignoring them would be reckless. by CNB