Atlanta’s Public-Housing Revolution

Renee Glover's Fresh Approach Transforms Lives


Cabrini Green in Chicago.

Renee Glover is the subject of This Piece [click to read] by Howard Husock in City Journal. Glover took charge of the Atlanta Housing Authority in 1994. "She has drawn national recognition for the fact that during her tenure, Atlanta became the first city in the United States to tear down virtually all its projects. But Glover’s plan is far more ambitious than demolition: she has set out to transform the dysfunctional behavior that condemns people to languish for years in public housing. Her approach is the most dramatic change in any city’s public-housing system since Franklin Roosevelt created the program in 1937."

Massive public housing projects were built in the mid-Twentieth Century. On the outside, they seemed to replace squalid run-down Nineteenth Century buildings with an economy version of the tall buildings of, say, Manhattan's Upper West Side. Tall buildings rose over open plazas. Better housing would improve lives...

Today those buildings that remain are often a nightmare. Encouraged by our welfare system to remain so, single mothers and their kids huddle in their apartments while gangs rule the plazas below. Across the country they are coming down. The whole experiment has only proved that the destruction of the family unit is destructive to society as a whole. Men find family in their association with gangs and multiple generations have grown up now without experiencing the satisfaction of working to improve their world.

Glover has begun to change all that. But better programs alone cannot do the job completely. Here is an opportunity for those who seek a Divine Mission in today's world!

The Church as Transformative Agent

In times past, the Church played a vital role in revitalizing society. As government has increasingly taken over the role of charitable work, it might seem that the Church is no longer relevant. The failure of public housing and welfare policy should make us look again.

It is well documented history that Christians labored to abolish slavery, reform institutions and improve treatment for the mentally ill. You might be surprised to learn that reformer John Calvin helped to set up silk mills in Geneva "...to absorb surplus labor and to make possible the`ending of begging." [G. W. Broomley, Servive in Christ, p111].

Timothy Keller, in a work called Resources for Deacons points to the role of Christians in promoting economic development. We've reduced the charitable ministry to handing out help with the rent, but Keller describes situations where Christian businessmen actually buy housing and create opportunities for both decent housing and gainfull employment by rehabilitating them.

Driving through Waynesboro, one sees the former Virginia Metalcrafters plant and the South River Complex. A few years ago I helped someone create a vision for a high-end speaker assemby operation in one of the South River buildings. What other inspirations might come to us if we prayerfully open our eyes to possibilities others might have overlooked.

Thoughts on the Pursuit of Happiness

Jerry Weinberger in City Journal offers Benjamin Franklin on American Happiness [click to read].

"Are Americans happy? In his unequaled Democracy in America, written after his visit to Andrew Jackson’s America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that Americans, despite living in the most prosperous and egalitarian society in history, were restive and melancholy: “grave and almost sad even in their pleasures.” Long before psychologists discovered the paradox of choice, Tocqueville saw that the pursuit of happiness, the third of the rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, was a mixed blessing."

Affirming the Pursuit of Security

It is a New Era, But the Battle is Not New

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." -- American Declaration of Independence

John Locke is credited with the original thought: "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions" In the first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason explains it better: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

This document is considered to be a model for the Declaration of Independence. Today the financial corruption of large entities, both government and corporate, are a real threat to this fundamental yearning. Here is one of the greatest challenges we face.


The Enron Complex


Franklin Raines

Perhaps a good beginning is to Acknowledge Corruption in the bodies one would invoke to oversee us.


Hydrogen cars offer the promise of
cleaner air and a healthy economy.

Then A Policy of Public and Private Entities in Partnership for Energy Independence would go a long way to secure this right. Nuclear Energy, Hydrogen cars, and a general push to go beyond the era of fossel fuel would also give us better environmental stewardship and national security. Hydrogen Cars are Here Now and we must have the resolve to build the clean technology of the future. If we can put a man on the Moon, we can build this new method of propelling our prosperity.

The economic benefits would be many. No doubt we would maintain a position of leadership in the production of this technology. Reduced oil consumption would help our balance of trade. Economic stability would benefit us far into the future.

New Ways of Looking at Healthcare, Education and Retirement will also be necessary.

Here is a Thought Provoking Piece by Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal that underscores the importance of protecting this basic human right.

Update:

Build Big, Mr. President by Howard Husock in City Journal proposes: "Obama should look past mere improvements and plan transformative infrastructure projects."

Required Reading:



Great Myths of the Great Depression [Click to Read]
by Lawrence W. Reed

"The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These policies included a litany of political missteps: central bank mismanagement, tradecrushing tariffs, incentive-sapping taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few. It was not the free market which produced 12 years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a grand scale."

Now Check Out the 4o Year Wish List as seen in The Wall Street Journal
Also: Is America's Diplomacy of Freedom Officially Over