HUD should know better

It shouldn't surprise anyone that New Orleans public housing residents are protesting the planned demolition of their homes.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing to knock down several public housing projects in New Orleans and rebuild them as new, mixed-income communities. HUD's plan sounds very similar to the kind of work done by the HOPE VI program, which has been very successful in many cities.

For example, Blondine Mikel says that the new Southwood Square in Stamford, Conn., is "like a dream come true." Mikel is the president of the Southwood Square Resident Council. Workers have just finished the HOPE VI redevelopment of Southwood. According to Mikel, her project was ravaged by crime, but now is a beautiful, safe place to raise a family.

But for years Mikel feared that the redevelopment would never happen or, if it did, that people like herself would never be invited to live at the new community. "You here all these rumors," she rememberd. "People saying: `They're never going to let anyone back.'"

It can be a long and difficult process to earn the trust of public housing residents during a HOPE VI redevelopment. So why is HUD doing so little to win the trust the public housing residents from New Orleans?

Most HOPE VI redevelopments build trust by including the residents early in the planning process. The residents at Southwood could attend monthly and even weekly meetings with the developers. But it is difficult for New Orleans residents to come to these kinds of meetings if they are scattered across the country.

If the residents of Southwood doubted that they would ever return to their community when they lived just a short busride away, how can the people from New Orleans' public housing projects believe that they will come home when they now in other cities in other states?

And since many successful HOPE VI redevelopments, like Southwood, take well over five years, what should these residents do while they wait?