The U.S. government has played some part in housing the poor since the nineteenth century. It was during World War II, however, that the program grew, when hundreds of public housing units were built around the country to house both returning veterans and their families and the poor. Public housing then was usually filled with mostly working-class and middle-class Whites, not the stereotypical ‘welfare mother’ the program’s opponents like to conjure.
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Decades later, most public housing units became overrun with gang and drug violence. Generations of families lived there, exposed to few, if any, positive role models. These complexes were viewed as ‘project cities’, complete with a school and grocery store within the complex. There was little reason for residents to venture outside the confines of public housing and so they didn’t. As a result, families that lived there rarely improved upon their situation and the cycle of poverty continued.
In 1992, then president Bill Clinton, a democrat, signed into law the Hope VI project, a program that sought to demolish public housing and replace it with mixed income communities. The thinking was that poor residents would be able to mix—and possibly be inspired by—their working and middle class neighbors, an opportunity they didn’t always have under the old model. As the program got underway, notorious housing complexes in major cities like Chicago and New York were torn down and replaced with new, townhouses and apartment buildings. Though Hope VI had its own critics, research shows that the program did work to decrease crime and helped instill a sense of pride in low-income residents.
It would be interesting to see what further benefits this project would bring, but we may not have that opportunity. Congress, led by a Republican faction determined to cut so-called entitlement programs in an effort to balance the federal budget, have eliminated Hope VI funding from the 2012 budget proposal.
Indeed, balancing the federal budget is important…but at what cost? We must consider what will happen to low-income families—families that are certainly not doing any better financially, given the current recession—if the program is not funded. Hope VI is not perfect but it has had its benefits. We owe it to the nation’s poor, and society as a whole, to end the vicious cycle of urban poverty.
Write your Congress men and women; tell them to continue to fund public housing. Feel free to suggest other ways they can balance the federal budget, perhaps by eliminating excessive tax refunds for multi-billion dollar corporations.
Visit https://www.usa.gov if you need help locating your elected official’s contact information.
(Judge Greg Mathis is a national figure known for his advocacy campaigns for equal justice. His inspirational life story of a street youth who rose form jail to Judge has provided hope to millions who watch him on the award-winning television court show Judge Mathis each day.)
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