Shelter Shorts

A Hometown with You in Mind?

A new book rating more than 400 U.S. metropolitan areas taps Gainesville, Fla., as the best place to live in the country. In the second edition of "Cities Ranked & Rated," authors Bert Sperling and Peter Sander give the "right-sized university town" high marks on such measures as economy and jobs; commuting time; cost of living; climate; education; health and health care; housing affordability; crime; transportation; leisure; arts and culture; and "quality of life," which includes physical setting, downtown core, heritage, and appearance.

The study's metrics might prompt guffaws in Tent City, where, according to a recent article in the Gainesville Sun, more than 100 people face eviction, with no place else to go. Or among the city's "bridge dwellers," who have ample opportunity to sample the climate in their open-air residences beneath highway overpasses. As the Sun reports, "With nearly 400 people without shelter on any given night and an abundance of urban forest, Gainesville is a city dotted with homeless campsites."

Gainesville's slogan, "A hometown with you in mind," is hard to square with life in a place where the most creative solutions for Tent City are more police patrols and fences to keep the homeless at a discreet distance from well-housed Gainesvillians basking in their number-one status.

Asked whether his research took the absence of affordable housing for low-income people into account, co-author Sander said, "We're looking through the average family's lens," adding, "We go to the National Association of Realtors, and we get the median price for homes. If I were able to get the high end or the low end, you would probably see more of that kind of research in the book."

Through the rose-colored glasses of USA Today, Jersey City looks fabulous. America's newspaper ran a feature article describing how the Hudson County city-long before "The Sopranos," the butt of a thousand Jersey jokes and synonymous with everything that ails urban America-has undergone an extreme makeover. Only problem is, the city on the page bears little resemblance to reality.

The article, "Model of Urban Future," reports that the hometown of Boss Frank Hague has "come back as its own antithesis: clean, green, and growing." Touting a spate of gleaming new office towers, expensive condos, and an influx of young professionals, USAT buries a raft of inconvenient truths such as a legacy of political corruption, polluted land, failed schools, and the fact that 19 percent of residents live below the poverty line, as opposed to 9 percent statewide and 12 percent nationally. Not until the 39th paragraph (out of 42) do we meet an unemployed security guard who laments, "We see buildings going up, but it doesn't do us any good." Looks like the town where the dead vote now boasts phantom revitalization.

Housing advocates are wondering if Mel Martinez had a conversion on the road to the Capitol. His record as HUD secretary merited failing grades on affordable-housing production and homelessness. Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, however, the Florida Republican has started to see the light on housing policies aimed at helping the poor. And this spring, he joined Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland to sponsor a bill reauthorizing the HOPE VI public-housing program with $600 million in funding for each of the next five years.

All 22 staff members of the Berkeley Housing Authority were fired in late spring after an investigation uncovered abuses within the agency, which receives $25 million in federal funds each year. Perhaps the most bizarre irregularity involved two years' worth of rent subsidies paid on behalf of 15 deceased tenants. Other violations included overpaying subsidies for some tenants and allowing ineligible tenants to inherit Section 8 vouchers from family members. Agency director Steve Barton has resigned, and the city, which failed as the agency's overseer, has been replaced with an independent board of commissioners. City attorney Manuela Albuquerque says the city's managers and Barton dismissed her advice to conduct audits for years.

Shelterforce never shies away from chiding mainstream media for ignoring America's affordable-housing crisis, so we shouldn't hesitate to give praise where it's due. Kudos to MSNBC.com's "Rising from Ruin," (www.nhi.org/go/risingfromruin) an online special report focused on the post-Katrina struggles of the coastal Mississippi towns of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Check out the site for some powerful work on the disappearance of affordable housing in the wake of the storm, including the often-ignored subject of rental housing. Using blogs, video, audio, and slide shows, the multimedia project brings home the dislocation thousands of renters are still experiencing almost two years after Katrina. "The loss was staggering," writes MSNBC.com editor Mike Stuckey. "In a state where nearly 30 percent of the residents are renters, 72,116 renter-occupied units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, according to Gov. Haley Barbour's office." Stuckey underscores the failure of federal will behind the crisis: "While billions in federal dollars are being handed out to directly help rebuild single-family homes, almost none has been made available so far to replenish rental housing in the hurricane zone. In Hancock County 20 months after the storm, not a single nail has yet been pounded to replace any of the hundreds of multifamily subsidized and market-rate rental units that were lost to the hurricane."

Things are heating up in Anaheim, Calif., where a dispute between the city council, a housing developer, and the Walt Disney Company has turned "the happiest place on earth" into a three-ring circus. Anaheim is home not only to Disneyland but also to more than 4,000 of the resort's low-wage employees. Most earn between $6 and $11 an hour and are unable to afford the area's steep rents. Many live in overcrowded apartments, in area motels, or in places with less-expensive housing. The city's affordable-housing stock is limited, and its housing-assistance waiting list is years-long. In August 2006, three of Anaheim's five city council members voted to reverse a 1994 zoning law that bans residential housing in the Disney resort area to allow the SunCal Company to build 1,500 apartments, including 225 affordable units. Disney officials balked at the proposal and challenged the council's decision. City councilmember Lori Galloway says Disney is a part of the affordable-housing problem and argues that having housing close to the resort would ease traffic congestion, end long commute times for the 25 percent of workers who live as far away as Los Angeles County, and alleviate the strain on the city's infrastructure. "We're still begging Disney to help us with the problems they're causing," Galloway said. In
response, Disney filed a lawsuit in February to protect the tourist area from "inappropriate development."

Copyright 2007

Back to Summer 2007 index.