If the goal is to give people houses, then give them houses. Tear down the concrete block monstrosities and build some serviceable town homes or something. Make the residents the actual owners, either individually or collectively, rather than having them rely on a political system that’s always going to have more important priorities, and then leave them alone. The only reason this may not seem like a serious alternative is because it doesn’t take the feeders at the public trough into consideration. Remember, it’s basically the LA city government that wants to tear down the project, not “free market enthusiasts.” You don’t suppose there’s something in it for them, do you?

I agree that housing projects need help, but the solution isn’t to just tear them down and build unaffordable housing. Stating that housing projects are bad is really just pointing out the obvious, but rarely does the statement, “therefore, we need to spend more money on the projects,” follow that platitude. Rather, privatization enthusiasts take the opportunity to talk about how the community needs to be bulldozed and privatized instead — as though that’s some kind of magic panacea.

The sentence you quote above is the only reference in the entire article to anything that could be construed as a privatization scheme. And it’s followed by this: “Or it could help create tenant-owned cooperatives, much like what the nonprofit Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation has been doing in San Diego.” And he also suggests placing people into preexisting but uninhabited single homes, in Watts, as a cheaper and better alternative. Now, maybe this is just more “window dressing” and Frank is in fact a right-wing loon. I have no idea—never heard of the guy before. I just think it’s disingenuous to portray this article as some kind of privatization hack piece.

The point of the rest of my comment was that these housing projects are basically cesspools, and I don’t see how anybody could be much worse off than living in one of them.

As for Jordan Downs itself, the city could help plug its deficit and get additional residential units into Watts by selling the complex to a builder who comes up with a blueprint for pleasant, affordable, market-rate housing.

And that’s the heart of the matter. Let’s get rid of public hosing for market-rate housing poor people won’t be able to afford.

Franks also suggests turning the land into a park. Anything to avoid the “straightjacket our public housing has become.” Also his words.

Better to look at a tree than a black kid, I guess.

Right-wing loons like Frank are very good at making the systematic gutting of public programs look like responsible fiscal solvency. They just neglect to mention the human suffering side of things.

You also say, “If men like Frank were truly acting in the spirit of altruism, wouldn’t they want to improve the preexisting communities of poor black people, say, by increasing police presence, creating job programs, fostering small businesses, and rebuilding public schools?” But again, you obviously didn’t read the article because it addresses every single one of these issues.

Lastly, you compare the “free market enthusiasts” who want to tear down these buildings and relocate the residents (never mind that it’s the LA Housing Authority that wants to get rid of the housing projects—unless this is who you mean by “free market enthusiasts”) to neglectful pet owners. But what about the neglectful treatment of the buildings and the residents by the public housing authorities, not to mention the omnipresent corruption, that Frank also mentions in the article? And that was pretty tame stuff. I’ve read and seen accounts on TV of housing projects that blew my mind—we’re talking shit and piss in hallways and stairwells, leaking pipes that were never fixed so that the residents were effectively without running water, broken or burned out light bulbs that were never replaced, and the dead bodies of kids found at the bottom of elevator shafts. And this is on top of the rampant crime, to the point that a maintenance man for one facility wouldn’t even enter the building without carrying a gun. If these places actually were housing animals, they’d be condemned and knocked down. Yet they’re okay for people?

I was going to say, before I read the article, that I agree with you about these “privatization” scams. But then I read it and realized it was just an excuse to take a few easy shots at that old “free market” bogeyman.

Talk to Carole Steele, who’s lived at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green since long before the Plan began, and she’ll tell you. “Ain’t nothing but a land grab,” she says.

Section 8 is the future of housing policy in this country, and yet, the whole idea is based one one very tiny program that worked well – sort of like how Headstart worked well until they made it a national program and took away everything that made it work. Section 8 has a lot, A LOT, of problems, and we are blissfully trying to pretend they’re not there.

Have you read Hanna Rosin’s piece in the Atlantic last year – American Murder Mystery?
It’s something I think you’d find very very interesting. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime

I’d like to do a similar study in Chicago. If only I was a criminologist and had lots of funding

Great post.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of its state run systems continued to function. For example, most Soviets lived in public housing, fueled by public utilities, and they got around using public transportation. When their economic system went down, even though few people had much or any usable cash, their homes were still heated and not boarded up, the lights stayed on, and they could still get around using buses and trains. Here in America, the free market and privatization makes ours a very different story. When we stop paying our bills, the lights go out and the banks take our homes.