NEW TREND. RAZING THE PROJECTS WHERE THE POOR LIVE. ATLANTA IS DESTROYING ALL PUBLIC HOUSING! CITY GOV's are MAKING LIKE HURRICANE KATRINA!

 In 1936, Atlanta built Techwood Homes, (rickety old apartment buildings) the nation's first housing project. But listen here, it was for whites. Not blacks, And stayed so until 1968 when Civil Rights liberated it for the people, for the brothers.

By the 1990s, a greater percentage of the city's residents were living in housing projects than lived in projects in any other city in America. The reason is that ATLANTA had a very high percentage of Afro Americans who had a hard time finding jobs, especially the black male and didn't have the economy that Chicago, Detroit or New York had back then, places where there actually was TRICKLE DOWN.

Today, Atlanta is nearing a very different record: becoming the first major city to knock them all down. By next June, officials here plan to demolish the city's last remaining housing project. .

Over the past 15 years, Atlanta has bulldozed about 15,000 units, (let's call that what it is, fifteen thousand families evicted) spread across 32 housing projects. The elimination of housing projects does not mean the abandonment of public housing. The Atlanta Housing Authority pays for more residents' housing these days than it did in the 1990s. But they are scattered throughout the city in mixed-income communities and private housing financed with vouchers through the government's Section 8 program.

Still, critics of the demolitions worry about the toll on residents, who must qualify for vouchers, struggle to find affordable housing and often move to only slightly less impoverished neighborhoods. Especially in a troubled economy, civil rights groups say, uprooting can lead to homelessness if more low-income housing is not made available. Lawsuits have been filed in many other cities, generally without success, that claim that similar relocations violate residents' civil rights and resegregate the poor. . in spite of the ruckust, the fighting back, over all, 195,000 public housing units have met the wrecking ball across the country since 2006, and over 230,000 more units are scheduled for demolition, according to the Housing and Urban Development Department. President Mugabe who did that to 100,000 slum homes in his country is going to be beat by Barack Obama.  Who'da thunk it!

The housing authority says the overwhelming majority of residents support the relocations. But critics say unsuspecting residents are forced into only marginally better neighborhoods. The vouchers, which usually provide families with $568 to $758 per month, according to the housing authority, are not available to residents with certain criminal backgrounds and are often viewed suspiciously by landlords in wealthier communities.

A large majority of displaced residents settle in 10 of Atlanta's poorest ZIP codes, according to an analysis of housing authority data by Creative Loafing, an alternative newspaper. Only about 20 percent return to their communities once the property becomes a mixed-income development, Mr.Boston said. "Until you have alternative housing that is affordable, available and appropriate, you have no business going into these communities and destroying them," said Anita Beaty, the executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. "To disperse these people without giving them alternatives is wrong."

The real winners, Ms. Beaty said, are business developers who make fortunes once the projects are torn down and the neighborhoods gentrify. For years, wealthier Atlantans, frustrated by long commutes, have been moving closer to their jobs downtown and, critics say, displacing poorer residents to outlying suburbs. .

COMMENT #1 from a Caribbean black immigrant woman."Atlanta is a major city. Public housing is for people with lower incomes. Because the rent is income based, people who can pay market rates for rent are not willing to pay market rates to live in a lower quality neighborhood even if the rental property is good.

Downtown areas are tourist attractions with shopping, cultural events and businesses. White folks will pay for that, so cities are smart to gentrify downtown areas. But in contrast, there is nothing attractive about cultural events in the barrio. There are a few churches to keep the brothered glued but no fine folk are going to pay for the culture happening in poor, ethnic,low income areas. As a black woman, I continually have to move, change apartments to get that quality of life.

Many white areas slip into blight and are then leased to blacks. Once a management company builder or landlord provides housing to low income residents for a period of years, they are no longer obligated to continue to do so. They can evict everyone and rent to yuppies at twice the price. The City of Santa Monica built huge apartment complexes along the beach for seniors and poor. As soon as they finished painting and wall papering they had a change of heart and leased to the rich for top prices.

More usual is that a few decades will pass with the lower case people living in these 'projects' and at that time, the properties have made enough money and owners want to use the property (land) to provide housing to a different class of people. This is unlikely to happen as long as there are lower income residents and/or vagrants. You can't attact yuppies when bus stops are used a sleeping and drinking places for the homeless. The drug dealers shoot the glass out of the booths so the paying transportation customers cannot use the booths to wait for the bus.

Wealthier people in Atlanta are interested in not seeing what they consider "human or property blight" so the poor must move until they are out of sight of the prosperous suburbs.. The best way to do that is to eliminate low income housing in the area and move it elsewhere.

In Detroit, they razed their projects and  a decade later, there is still dirt where pubic housing used to be. Screwin' the poor has always been part of the oligarch agenda but it is about to really become a national past time and not just a trend..