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Interesting Read on Public Housing

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This is about DC’s effort to move toward more mixed use and not concrete block housing, but I lifted this quote for the purposes of our discussion on gentrification.

Mr. Kelly is undertaking a great experiment to see if he can turn around distressed neighborhoods and keep the original residents there to benefit,” said Sue Popkin, a housing expert at the Urban Institute. “It’s a gamble. We don’t know how to take a terrible neighborhood and make it nice while keeping the same people there.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/21housing.html

0 thoughts on “Interesting Read on Public Housing”

  1. I thought this was an interesting quote:

    One-for-one replacement of units will be more difficult in cities lacking high land prices, which enabled Washington to issue bonds tied to future tax revenues.

    In other words, the high price of property in D.C. gives the city the tools to upgrade their public housing. A city with low land prices (e.g. Detroit) just has to live with their dismal 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s era projects until they completely fall apart.

  2. and that is an instance where the state or fed gov need to step up and play a bigger role to do what a locality can not do.