THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310316
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 87 lines
The city's housing authority wants to require public housing residents to do volunteer work and make their children go to school.
Tenants would not be evicted automatically for violating the proposed requirements, a housing authority official said. Elderly and disabled residents would be exempt from community service.
But the proposals, especially the one requiring 20 hours a year of community service, were roundly opposed Wednesday at the first community meeting on the ideas.
The meeting, held in Diggs Town, drew about 100 tenants.
``Volunteering should be your own choice!'' said Angela Johnson, who said she already devotes countless volunteer hours to helping her neighborhood and operates a home-based day-care business.
The community-service and mandatory school attendance ideas are in a proposed five-part ``social lease addendum'' to the regular leases that tenants must sign.
Vera Franklin, resident services manager for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, said the social lease would ``help residents use their time in public housing as an opportunity to improve the social and economic state of their lives.''
She noted that federally funded public housing was created more than 45 years ago as a steppingstone to upward movement for low-income families, ``and we need to get back to that philosophy.''
Franklin said the social lease also would help the housing authority counter severe cuts in federal subsidies for public housing.
``Part of the responsibility of living in public housing is to be able to help make things work there. That can't be done just by management alone,'' Franklin said. ``We're trying to rally people around that concept that they can make a difference in their communities.''
Community service could entail any of a wide range of activities, including attending tenant and PTA meetings, helping elderly neighbors with meals and rolling out garbage cans, Franklin said.
The housing authority would ask tenant organizations to help document the volunteer hours and organize award ceremonies to boost community morale, Franklin said.
The social lease calls for:
Annual assessments to look at the social needs of residents and make referrals, offer counseling and document achievements.
An orientation period to help residents become familiar with community programs and housing authority policies.
Volunteering in self-sufficiency programs that help residents move out of public housing.
On Wednesday, tenants focused their comments on the proposed community-service requirement. They agreed on the importance of volunteering but not on mandating it.
Arlene Barber, president of the Diggs Town Tenant Management Corp., said the requirement would make tenants seem like criminals ordered to work off their jail sentences.
Barber also said the housing authority should pay tenant leaders for their many hours of community-organizing work. ``They keep relying on us to hold together the neighborhood,'' she said, ``but we are the ones who never get the jobs.''
A community-service requirement would be unfair to tenants who already work or are in college or job-training programs, said Sophia Howard, a 13-year resident.
``Why do I have to give up 20 hours of my free time when I'm already working?'' said Howard, a supervisor at a nursing home.
Other tenants said they resented the proposed mandatory school attendance policy as a government intrusion into their lives.
But Franklin countered: ``It's not a punitive thing. It's for the betterment of the community. It's really supporting the parents in making sure their kids stay in school.''
The mandates would be coupled with more assistance, such as the authority's recent hiring of a parent advocate to help tenants resolve school problems, Franklin said.
Franklin said the authority has been mulling the social lease ideas for three or four years and decided to pursue them now because of changes in federal policies and funding regarding social programs, such as welfare and public housing.
The authority will begin an official 30-day public-comment period, probably on Wednesday. The agency is scheduled to vote Dec. 9.
MEMO: Send questions and comments to Vera Franklin of the Norfolk
Redevelopment and Housing Authority, P.O. Box 968, Norfolk, VA 23501, or
call her at 623-1111.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK PUBLIC HOUSING SOCIAL LEASE RESIDENT
REQUIREMENTS by CNB