In Miami-Dade county, it was recently discovered that nearly 900 public housing units were available but remained vacant due to a shortage of maintenance staff responsible for repairs and renovations. The mayor promptly fired the head of the Housing Authority and ordered that the units be made available immediately. This action followed the recent brouhaha over the corrupt and incompetent county public housing authority that spent $22 million over six-years, displaced over 800 families, and had only three homes to show for it. According to Sushma Sheth of the Miami Workers Center, 40,000 families are on a waiting list for affordable housing. Too bad for them. A tour of the county's projects reveals row after row of boarded up apartments in largely empty neighborhoods. The most amazing thing I noticed was that the buildings looked to be in pretty good shape and I had to stop and ask myself, what is going on here? These buildings are sturdy structures built out of bricks, concrete, and wood and you can bet they meet the strict south Florida building code. With a few simple repairs (broken windows, new doors, some electrical, etc, etc.), people could be living in them. May I suggest that the answer to correcting the problem does not lie in paying county workers to "fix them up" or building new public housing from scratch but rather in giving the abandoned county owned buildings to the poor in exchange for the Habitat for Humanity principal of "sweat equity," where first time homeowners take on the responsibilities of repair and maintenace in exchange for the keys to the "unit," which I like to call "foothold homes." With a "foothold home," the poor get a helping hand to step up to becoming part of the middle-class while taking from government and placing upon themselves the burden of owning their own home. Coupled with the ideas that transformed Chicago's reputation as having the worst public housing in the U.S. into a prototype for the best in public housing-- which includes listening to the people who live there about what they want and need and drug testing of housing applicants (if you fail, there is no way you're moving into the neighborhood)-- then we might just have something that works. But what happens when those "foothold home owners" want to "sell and move on up"? Basically, they take the money the county required them to save in a bank (regularly checked electronically by the county) as a condition to moving in and use it to bankroll the downpayment on their "American dream." Knowing in advance it may take them a decade or more to gather that "nest egg," they make sure the place they live in is liveable-- plus annual county inspections make sure it is or they risk eviction. Vacating their "foothold home" opens it up to the next deserving family. "Foothold homes" are never sold. Instead of God "helping those who help themselves," it becomes the public helping those who help themselves. Oh, yeah. Since the county is looking for someone to head the new Housing Authority, may I also suggest they get in touch with President Jimmy Carter at Habitat for Humanity and see if he wants the job. If he's too busy, maybe someone there who understands the meaning of the word "nonprofit" might take up the offer. |
