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Providing decent and affordable housing to low-income people has been a challenge to officials at all levels of government for decades. During my twelveyear tenure as mayor of Baltimore, I worked with the housing secretaries of three U.S. presidents on this challenge, particularly as it relates to those living in public housing. It was under President Bill Clinton’s housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, that creative policy development and wise decisionmaking converged to produce an innovative approach that helped to improve the quality of life for many of the country’s poorest citizens. That innovative approach came to be known as HOPE VI. In Baltimore, as in many cities, much of the public housing was built shortly after World War II, designed to be transitional housing for the large number of military veterans and their families. In Baltimore, these new high-rise buildings replaced aging housing with poor sanitation and other unsafe living conditions. Unfortunately, over time those once welcoming structures became warehouses of poverty. Rather than being places for families to get a fresh start, the public housing high-rises were transformed into poverty traps characterized by high crime rates, significant unemployment, and deteriorating physical plants. For far too long, the government’s response to the condition of public housing was predictable and uncreative. Money was given to local housing authorities to maintain the buildings at the lowest possible level of habitability. For the most part, public housing became second-class housing and the people living there felt that the government treated them as second-class citizens. They had no incentive to treat the facilities with care. An attitude of indifference and sometimes outright hostility emerged from a significant number of residents of public housing. However, under HOPE VI, things began to change. The program reflected a new view—that cities were centers of opportunity and not just massive shelters for the poor. Cisneros walked through public housing projects, joined by government officials and residents who reported that they liked the neighborhoods in which they lived but despised the housing. Residents had asked government officials for help in the past without expecting—or receiving— much, but this time, the response was both surprising and inspiring. They were offered a new type of partnership through a vehicle called HOPE VI. Although created at the federal government level, HOPE VI had at its heart the belief that the solution to public housing problems was not to be found in the nation’s capital but in the communities where public housing was located. Those who designed HOPE VI believed that local residents and government foreword vii viii foreword officials, in partnership, could transform public housing projects into attractive, livable communities. Residents were encouraged to dream their fondest dreams for themselves, their families, and their neighbors. They then were asked to work with housing experts and government leaders to envision a plan for a new community. With skepticism at first and then with enthusiasm, Baltimore’s public housing residents embraced the opportunities offered by HOPE VI. Lafayette Courts, a housing project less than a mile from Baltimore’s central business district, was the first of the city’s public housing communities to be transformed. Under a plan developed in partnership with the residents, the old high-rises were imploded and a new neighborhood was born, complete with rental apartments, for-sale town houses, a senior citizen apartment complex , a youth recreation center, and a community center that included headquarters for a police unit dedicated to patrolling only that neighborhood. At a community association meeting after the new buildings were completed, a woman was heard to say that with the new buildings, the residents now had such a pleasant view of downtown. Her observation led the residents to vote to change the name of Lafayette Courts to Pleasant View Gardens. The second of the city’s public housing redevelopments transformed the Lexington Terrace high-rises on the western edge of downtown, whose residents were among the first in the nation to share their concerns with Cisneros when he visited there early in his term. Thanks to HOPE VI, the site is now a welcoming mixed-income community of traditional Baltimore row houses, new retail and office space, and apartments for the elderly. With the redevelopment of Lafayette Courts, Lexington Terrace, and four subsequent communities under HOPE VI, the program brought hope to thousands of Baltimore’s low-income residents. Of course, the program was not a cure-all for all people and for...

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