Time to learn facts, Democrats: Myths and misperceptions about public housing ... and lessons from Chicago's reform effort.

It doesn't come as any great surprise that Jeff Gahan would like to replace affordable housing in New Albany with various manifestations of "luxury."

Gahan's Grab: Yes, principled Democratic positions on public housing actually DO exist, and here's one of them. But first, some Kool Aid!

It's no more surprising that City Hall's forthcoming public housing putsch, as abetted by a Democratic Party gone entirely off the rails, is based on myth. I've given precious little "tease" to this article, because if you're genuinely interested in learning the facts, you'll click through and then follow up by expressing your outrage to the elected officials who are tolerating this classic instance of Gahanian and Dickeysian depravity.

Myths and misperceptions surrounding public housing and the people who live in it, by Pete Rodrigue (Greater Greater Washington)

A lot of Americans believe things about federally subsidized housing that simply aren’t true. You’ll sometimes hear things like, “most federal housing assistance just means people living in government-owned high rises,” or “people who get housing assistance don’t work.” Thankfully, we have data to investigate these beliefs. Let’s look at four of the biggest myths.

1. Myth: Most public housing means big projects
2. Myth: Most housing assistance recipients don’t have jobs, and they’re all black
3. Myth: Subsidized housing generally lowers surrounding property values and increases crime
4. Myth: Housing subsidies worsen recipients’ lives

Chicago and New Albany exist on vastly different scales, but certain of the lessons are transferable. The verdict: "We can accomplish only so much with better housing and slightly better circumstances. It was naïve to think that relocation was going to address all the problems families were having."

And Gahan is addressing these problems ... how?

Didn't think so. Those crickets never lie.

Hard Lessons From Chicago’s Public Housing Reform, by Susan Popkin (CityLab)

Two decades ago, the city embarked on an ambitious—and controversial—plan to transform its troubled public housing system, uprooting thousands of low-income residents. Today, researcher Susan Popkin reflects on what worked—and what failed.

 ... It was the era of Clinton-style welfare reform and the beginning of efforts to shrink the federal role; that meant that private developers—both for-profit and nonprofit—would own and manage these new properties. Today, the effect on Chicago’s West and South Sides is evident: The forbidding high-rises are gone. Though the pace of new construction has been frustratingly slow, the area now has seven new safe and attractive communities (with three more in the works), as well as parks, stores, and other signs of economic renewal.

As many critics have noted, the Plan for Transformation meant involuntary displacement for many thousands of African-American residents, a process that was painful and stressful for most of them. Only a portion of the units in the new developments were meant for public-housing families, and relatively few original residents moved back. Most either took vouchers and rented private-market housing or moved to another refurbished public-housing community. Still, when contacted years later, nearly all the relocated CHA residents I studied said they were living in better housing in safer neighborhoods. The fact that no child is growing up in a place as bad as Robert Taylor Homes was when I first walked into it is a real and important victory.

But it is only a partial one. The majority of the families who moved still live in places that are poorer, more racially segregated, and more violent than the rest of the city. Such places will not fundamentally change children’s life trajectories.

Gahan's Grab: Yes, principled Democratic positions on public housing actually DO exist, and here's one of them. But first, some Kool Aid!

We live in bizarre times.

Mayor Jeff Gahan, a presumed Democrat (this being an ever shakier proposition), currently is putting into motion a long-gestating plan to eliminate public housing in New Albany by demolishing as many units as possible without building any of them back.

Toward this end Gahan has waged cold war against the New Albany Housing Authority, packed the weakened NAHA's board with sycophants, and hired top-dollar consultants from afar to lubricate the gears of his power (and land) grab.

Four things you should know about Jeff "Dead Inside" Gahan's public housing hostile takeover and land grab.

Meanwhile, tattered chairman Adam Dickey and whatever remains of the besieged Floyd County Democratic Party have been completely silent on the public housing issue.

Of course, Dickey and Gahan also are conspiring together to remove council attorney (and loyal Democrat) Matt Lorch at the behest of serial bigot Dan Coffey, who fled the Democratic Party to suckle at the engorged teats of the Trumpians, but now sees his council swing vote stock rise as Democratic power inexorably ebbs.

Do any principled Democrats remain? Yes, prominent members of the Democratic Party are opposed to the public housing machinations, and offended by the pants-on-fire approach elucidated by the updated Comprehensive Plan. These concerns were aired by area activists at Monday evening's council meeting, only to be greeted with Old White Guy yawns and Coffey's usual posturing.

As such, I'm encouraged to see this social media message by Stacy Deck, former Vice Chair of the Floyd County Democratic Central Committee. I don't know what it says about the state of the party. Does the party even exist?

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If you care about fair and affordable housing for low-income persons in our community--most of whom are working below the living wage--please read this article. The New Albany Comprehensive Plan proposes to eliminate public housing in our community based on the unsubstantiated belief that there will be enough affordable and/or subsidized housing in our community to avoid making people homeless. If this worries you, please let the New Albany Housing Authority board and our elected city officials know that they must use accurate and detailed data to assess the impact of this plan, and they must have a clear strategy for making affordable housing available to the families and senior citizens who will be affected. Specifically, this means you don't tear down anyone's housing until they have found a safe and affordable alternative, you ask for their input, and you provide adequate time and information so that they can make a transition. Keep in mind that people's lives will be disrupted and their access to necessary services may be affected. Please encourage Mayor Gahan, our city councilmen, and the NAHA board to not put vulnerable children and elderly persons at even greater risk by compromising their housing stability.

Four things you should know about Jeff "Dead Inside" Gahan's public housing hostile takeover and land grab.

Dead inside!

Revere a million prayers

And draw me into your holiness

But there's nothing there

Light only shines from those who share

Unleash a million drones

Confine me then erase me babe

Do you have no soul?

It's like it died long ago

As usual, Jeff Gillenwater keeps it simple and direct. I urge readers to contact Mayor Gahan, the City Council and the Floyd County Democratic Party, and ask them why this assault on the New Albany Housing Authority is being prioritized.

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For the unfamiliar, it might be helpful to know a few things.

1. Public housing units are often demolished with the promise of one-to-one replacement. That rarely actually happens and the displacement discrepancy is often significant. The City of Louisville, for instance, cannot begin to tell you what actually happened to lots of if not most former residents of complexes they've demolished. New Albany, on the other hand, isn't even pretending to do one-to-one replacement.

2. Much like in Louisville, the units not slated via Camp Gahan for rehab/replacement on site in New Albany are the ones located in areas considered most valuable by private developers. The "land grab" evidence is strong.

3. A lot of research suggests that decentralization of subsidized housing does not benefit residents and often creates problems for others as the problems and/or problematic people the residents were experiencing just continue on in their new locations sans the community self-help and support mechanisms they may have built in their previous locations. While the "project" areas get "better" (read as: gentrified), the residents often don't as their opportunities or lack there of don't change simply by virtue of being separated from friends in a strange place. Poverty related issues are just dispersed across other neighborhoods which often don't have the service base to deal with them.

4. In New Albany, these are the very same government officials who recently successfully conspired to fork over millions of public dollars to a private developer who's building an "upscale" apartment complex in my neighborhood charging unprecedented rents way above current market rates. These folks are quite literally subsidizing housing for the wealthy while cutting it for the poor so the land on which they currently live can be redeveloped.

Previously:

ON THE AVENUES: A luxury-obsessed Jeff Gahan has packed a board and now seeks to break the New Albany Housing Authority. Can we impeach him yet?

So-called "Democrat" Jeff Gahan's "Memorandum of Understanding" details his hostile takeover of the New Albany Housing Authority, and the land grab to follow.

So-called "Democrat" Jeff Gahan's "Memorandum of Understanding" details his hostile takeover of the New Albany Housing Authority, and the land grab to follow.

The Memorandum of Understanding (in PDF form, below) provides an outline of the city's plan for a hostile takeover of the New Albany Housing Authority.

As discussed yesterday in my column, the NAHA has a plan of its own for modernizing and decentralizing affordable public housing, but the city has actively sought to cripple it (and to pack the NAHA board with shameless sycophants) in preparation to purge the city of as many affordable public housing units as it possibly can, and to use ground cleared of affordable housing to facilitate "luxury" projects prioritized in the new Comprehensive Plan, one largely crafted by the same bureaucrats who'll now "administer" affordable housing in New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: A luxury-obsessed Jeff Gahan has packed a board and now seeks to break the New Albany Housing Authority. Can we impeach him yet?

As for any of Gahan’s claims about cooperation with the NAHA board, it must be understood that he’s done everything in his power to subvert its legal operation, primarily by withholding appointments – an abuse so flagrant that Rep. Ed Clere has been compelled to author legislation in the House that would forestall such chump maneuvers in the future.

It remains that the NAHA is an Indiana corporation, and plays by Ben Carson's Department of Housing and Urban development, pointing to a supreme irony, because if Gahan is able to accomplish this takeover and purge owing to the disintegration of HUD, our presumably Democratic mayor (does the term still have meaning?) will yet again be out-Trumping the Donald himself.

The Memorandum of Understanding reads something like the one handed by Ribbentrop to the Polish ambassador just before Hitler's tanks crossed the border. Feeling good about yourselves, Democrats?

The Urban Enterprise Association meets today.

Next up for Come Down Low City: Today, City Hall "reaches out" for the UEA's checkbook. I suggest barricading the Elsby Building.

Hostile takeovers are another example of the top-down, government-by-the-usual suspects approach that leads inevitably to faulty sloganeering, but just remember: Only 101 days until finally, mercifully, we can flush.

Resistance: How the NA/FC School Board should respond to state legislators.

Civil disobedience against irresponsible rule is a founding principle of this country. The school board has already passed one resolution against the state takeover of our local schools. That spirit should continue and they should be willing to put it into practice rather than just on paper.

Should those already outlined and further rules hostile to public education and local control be put in place, the NA/FC school board should simply refuse to follow them.

Stand up for teachers.

If the legislature guts collective bargaining as the governor intends, the board should give teachers even more negotiating rights.

If the legislature implores teacher evaluation rubrics, the board should ignore them and develop their own in consultation with teachers, students, and other members of the community.

If the state increases curricular mandates, the board should give teachers more leeway to decide what to teach and how to teach it.

And when the state declares that our local schools aren't performing the way some brute from Terre Haute or Anderson says they should according to resource-wasting tests that do little to nothing to measure actual student aptitudes and abilities, simply shrug it off and go on educating.

Citizens, on the other hand, should have their backs.

It's ridiculous to think that the state will somehow make teachers better by weakening their ability to determine what's best for their students, classrooms, and schools, hypocritical to say that charter schools perform better because they don't face such rigid state oversight while simultaneously prescribing more rigid state oversight for other public schools, and ridiculous to run for state office on a platform of lessened government intrusion and then declare local citizens unable to render community-wide decisions for themselves.

Whether in the media, in the court room, or at the ballot box, we can force the governor and legislators to explain how and why they think they are more qualified than local teachers and citizens working together to make decisions for our community's children, how and why they think standardized curricula and rote testing leads to innovation, and how and why competition, the very nature of which stands to pit schools against each other rather than proactively sharing best practices, is both necessary and just.

We owe ourselves that. Don't give in.