THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506020533
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
In a twist on public hearings, members of the city's public housing task force Thursday pleaded with their audience instead of being on the receiving end of comments.
``I don't understand this distrust for the task force,'' said Ulysses Turner, chairman of the education subcommittee and head of the Norfolk School Board. ``I wish you would work with us.''
Turner and other many others on the 37-member task force said they have no intentions of recommending the demolition of public housing. They said they hoped to quell suspicions that have grown since the panel formed in January.
One by one, task force members echoed Turner's words. Many promised they would resign if they learned that demolition was to be a recommendation.
``Public housing ain't going nowhere. If it is, I'll take a bomb and blow up City Hall myself,'' said Elzie Stewart, a task-force member who lives in the Tidewater Gardens public housing neighborhood.
He urged fellow tenants to work with other Norfolk residents to improve all neighborhoods.
About 125 people attended the hearing in Ruffner Middle School.
Task force members said there were no hidden agendas and that they're only mission was to improve the lives of residents.
City Councilman Herbert M. Collins Sr., task force co-chairman, said he believed the comments from fellow panel members ``put down the suspicion.''
But several tenants, including some who spoke at the hearing, disagreed.
``I'm sorry. I'm not going to trust them until I actually see what comes to fruition,'' said Hope Young of Diggs Town.
Young said she had been displaced by public and private redevelopment of Ghent and Lakeland Apartments.
Young drew some of the heaviest applause during the hearing when she told the task force that public housing still was needed for Norfolk's many poor families. She told of being laid off from a 12-year job at a local shipyard.
``I am a good citizen,'' Young said. ``I'm poor now, but I'm not immoral.''
Collins said he interpreted the comments of tenants and other speakers as meaning that Norfolk's low-income black residents were frustrated and scared by a long history of displacement.
``I think that's what they fear again,'' he said.
But he added: ``For the most part, people of public housing want a change and they want to be a part of the change. They want to be participants.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Lucille Hughs of Norfolk attended the city's first public hearing on
public housing at Ruffner Middle School Thursday night because she
wants Norfolk to be ``a better place in which to live.''
by CNB