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Unity Launches New Era Of Public Housing In Ann Arbor

Unity Launches New Era Of Public Housing In Ann Arbor image Unity Launches New Era Of Public Housing In Ann Arbor image
Parent Issue
Month
April
Year
1990
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
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Agenda Publications
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"We're here, we're going to stay here, and we're going to continue building our victories." The speaker was public housing tenant leader Elmira Collins, addressing a crowd of about eighty residents of Ann Arbor's public housing projects and housing co-ops.

The meeting hall- the Michigan Union's Kuenzel Room - was filled with emotion: anger, gratitude, pride. Besides Collins, many other tenants stood to offer heartfelt testimonials, gratitude for divine assistance, angry recriminations against the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, and a biblical closing: "How pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."

The occasion was the March 24 conference celebrating UNITY, the year-old organization of Ann Arbor's public housing tenants. Most of the day was spent in a series of workshops on the issues of public housing organizing, tenant rights and homelessness. The evening's open forum culminated in a thunderous keynote address by Bertha Gilkey, a nationally prominent tenant organizer from St. Louis, Missouri.

The anger of many tenants stemmed from a burning dispute between residents of the South Maple complex and the housing commission over the quality of the rehabilitation work there. "They've been working a year and a half on rehab and it's worse than when it started. It's a nightmare," says Elmira Collins, who represents the South Maple tenants' organization.

Collins and other tenants maintain that the work, which cost just short of $1 million (funded by a HUD grant) consists of cosmetic improvements like patios and peepholes, while major structural, plumbing and electrical problems are ignored. "What are we going to do with a peephole? Our basements are flooding," she says.

Ann Arbor Housing Commission Executive Director Bonnie Newlun denies the charges of incomplete and shoddy work. "We didn't ignore anything," she says. "If there's standing water, I'd like someone to show me where it is." Newlun also says that UNlTY's examples of unsafe electrical wiring and falling kitchen cabinetry are exaggerations.

The rehab work is only a part of a larger issue, according to UNITY leaders. "It seems we are being systematically forced from the city," said acting UNITY chairperson Sheila Taylor. UNITY cites Federal Department of Labor wage statistics and city of Ann Arbor rent data to show that service workers cannot live here; the analysis shows that local security guards could afford 80% of Ann Arbor rental housing units in 1980, but only 17% of units in 1988. Typists saw their pool of available housing shrink from 35% to 17% over the same period, according to UNITY.

Says Taylor, "Most of us have our roots in the city, and we will not be moved."

The situation here mirrors the national dilemma of public housing tenants, according to Gilkey. Public housing, first conceived during the Roosevelt administration as temporary housing for unemployed workers, has now become permanent housing for the urban poor. According to Gilkey, the 1990s marks a crisis point for public housing. Paternalism and bureaucratic inefficiency can no longer be tolerated by tenants, due to shrinking public funds, widespread hostility against the poor and public housing tenants, and the disappearance of home-ownership opportunities for low-income Americans. "It's a new day. And unless we form a partnership, there won't be any housing to argue over," says Gilkey, who adds that Samuel Pierce, Ronald Reagan's HUD chief, presided over the demolition of 650,000 public housing units during the '80s.

Housing is becoming increasingly inaccessible to everybody, said Gilkey. "The American dream was the little white house with garage and backyard," says Gilkey. "The rich and middle class have accepted that that is no longer a realistic dream - they have accepted condos. If the rich have accepted that to own a home is an impossible dream to them, then you know it's an impossible dream to us. I am convinced that public housing will become my children's, and my children's children's, condos."

"People say to me, 'Why do you live in public housing?' I say to them, 'This is my neighborhood.' I say to them, 'This is the only home that low-income residents of this country will ever have.'" 

The lack of housing opportunities for the poor - combined with public prejudice and bureaucratic indifference - makes it necessary for public housing tenants to take over management (or ownership) of their own complexes, and to create a healthy, safe environment for themselves and their families, said Gilkey. "Unless we control our neighborhoods, we will join the homeless. And there's no room for us out there; the streets have already been taken."

Here in Ann Arbor, UNITY - the first citywide organization of public housing tenants to come together since the complexes were built in the late '60s and early '70s - offers hope. The immediate issues are rehabilitation and maintenance, safety, welfare rights, and tenant rights. The ultimate issue is tenant control of public housing. Says Gilkey, "If we are ever as poor people going to taste, going to experience the American dream, then you have got to allow us to control our neighborhoods, to participate, to control our future and our children's future."

Only time will tell whether a new era of tenant participation has begun in Ann Arbor. The very existence of a united tenant group is a strong portent of change. "Nobody in Ann Arbor has ever done this before," says Collins. "We are making history."

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