THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220280
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
Congress has public housing in its sights, and the debate over whether funds should be drastically cut moved to Diggs Town on Monday when a top federal official dropped by.
On a quick tour through Virginia, HUD's acting deputy secretary, Dwight Robinson, visited the award-winning public housing project in Campostella, recently renovated with $17 million in HUD money.
The 400-home development now features Jeffersonian-style front porches with white columns, new roads, spruced-up interiors and white picket fences.
It is the type of project that no longer would be funded if the program cuts go through, officials said. In Norfolk, cuts already approved by the House of Representatives and pending in the Senate would cost the city $4.1 million a year.
The proposed cuts have stimulated a national debate on the merits of public housing: whether it fosters dependency and wastes money or can still be used as ``a step up'' for those who need it.
Robinson appeared briefly at Diggs Town about noon outside the management offices, and spoke there with Mayor Paul Fraim, U.S. Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-3rd District, and various federal and city housing officials.
Robinson did not have time Monday to tour Diggs Town or interview its residents. He was off to Richmond for a similar visit in the early afternoon.
But had he inquired, he would have discovered that even public housing residents have mixed feelings about the way taxpayer money is spent.
Lee Baker, 65, a retired brick layer, says he doesn't know where else he would live if it weren't for public housing. A resident of Diggs Town for four years, Baker likes the new porches, as well as the stricter management that, he said, has helped limit drug dealing and crime.
``I sit out all the time now on the front porch, but at first I didn't - I was afraid I'd get shot,'' Baker said from his doorstep after Robinson had left the neighborhood. ``If it weren't for public housing, I don't know what people living on a fixed income like I would do, because I can't afford to live anywhere else.''
The Diggs Town renovation project won a design award from Urban Initiatives, a New York-based non-profit organization dedicated to good city design.
But Donna Baxter, 33, a resident for four years, said the money would have been better spent on maintenance and quality construction than on amenities such as picket fences and porches, which, she said, have made no difference in her life.
A single mother of seven children ages 2 to 16, Baxter said the city maintained public housing poorly, was slow to answer complaints and was lax toward unruly tenants.
``I think the funds are being misused,'' Baxter said, as her children milled around in her kitchen. ``They could have put it into better cabinets and plumbing.''
The two perspectives mirrored the debate about public housing.
Congress' Republican majority has proposed slashing funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including public housing money. They argue the funds would be better spent on programs that work in the private sector, such as housing vouchers.
Under a bill passed by the House, about $5 billion would be spent next year on public housing instead of $8 billion. The Senate will take up the matter this fall.
Norfolk would lose $2.5 million in money used to improve buildings and $1.6 million in operating expenses as a result. Portsmouth and Newport News would lose a total of $2 million each, Robinson said.
Not only public housing would be affected, Robinson said. The cities would lose millions in federal funds for drug prevention and homeless care.
Beside the money spent on modernization, Diggs Town, which has roughly one-tenth of the city's public housing apartments, now receives about $1.3 million in operating subsidies through the federal government, officials say.
The Clinton administration agrees that public housing programs need to be reformed but proposes that the budget be cut more gradually, Robinson said.
``Public housing has been part of the United States at least since 1936, and probably before,'' Robinson said. ``It should provide people with a step-up. But it has, in too many cases, become a place where people reside for generations. We want to change that and go back to what public housing used to be.''
He said it used to be a place where a family could live while it got on its feet, not a home for succeeding generations. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by TAMARA VONINSKI, Staff
Donna Baxter of Diggs Town has concerns about how money has been
spent on Diggs Town. Baxter, 33, holds daughter Natasha, 2.
Granddaughter Unique, 1, is in the front. HUD official Dwight
Robinson, right, visited Monday.
Chart
Who would lose what
For complete information see microfilm
KEYWORDS: PUBLIC HOUSING SUBSIDIZED HOUSING by CNB