Public Housing

History's most infamous public-housing photo was snapped here in July 1972 as city-housing authorities dynamited the three central blocks of the massive Pruitt-Igoe project. I'd been at the terminally troubled 12-story high-rises several months earlier. It was hard to miss the trouble. Walkways were covered with shattered window glass and tin cans. In hallways, lights were broken, elevators vandalized. The stench of garbage and urine was everywhere. The "ultimate solution" for Pruitt-Igoe - the demolition of 33 buildings, broadcast to an incredulous nation - led me, and others, to a snap conclusion.

I UNDERSTAND the need for urban renewal, and I don't want to sound cruel, but how is it that all the residents in housing projects in South Philly get newly built houses while hardworking people in South Philly have to struggle to buy a new home? I grew up in South Philly in a single-parent home and never lived in the projects - that's a testament to my mother wanting better for us. I personally know people who have generations of relatives living in the projects. Why not? It's cheap, you don't have to care for it and sooner or later, they'll build you a new home at taxpayers' expense.

On May 27, 1987, the Newark, N.J., housing authority began the demolition of the Scudder Homes project. Before television news crews, the first high- rise building was leveled. This dramatic event symbolized the failure of 50 years of federal housing policy. The Scudder homes project was built in the 1960s at a cost of $20 million. In the ensuing years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development poured another $36 million into the project. Despite the massive amounts of money spent on Scudder Homes, the project became a breeding ground for crime, poverty and vandalism.

For nearly three months, 32 Philadelphia public housing residents from across the city have risen at dawn to commute to the Tasker Homes development to learn as much as they can about the building trades. "It's hard getting up in the morning to get here. But that's what it takes to make it in the trades. So there ain't much use in complaining," said Bernard Browne, 20, who rides a train, subway and two buses to get to Tasker in South Philadelphia from his Northeast apartment. The program that has Browne and his fellow residents so motivated was officially unveiled yesterday during a ceremony featuring public housing Executive Director Carl Greene, Mayor Rendell and a host of city, civic and union leaders.

None of the horror stories in Daily News reporter Joe Daughen's story Friday on the Philadelphia Housing Authority were news to the authority's 100,000 tenants. Nor are these findings in the most recent audit of PHA by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: 99 percent of PHA housing units flunk HUD's "decent, safe and sanitary" tests. PHA's bloated maintenance staff is so inept it takes about five years to fix up a vacant unit and move a new family into it. Routine maintenance is so sloppy PHA doesn't know how many service calls it makes or completes.

When the Schuylkill Falls towers were demolished back in 1996, the promise was that the dilapidated, oversized housing project would be replaced with a viable, mixed-income community. Now, at long last, the promise is on the verge of being fulfilled. Tomorrow morning in East Falls, dignitaries including Gov. Rendell and Mayor Street are to gather to cut the ribbon on the final element of the package: A private, market-rate development - featuring a number of large and expensive homes - sitting right next to public housing.

After touring public housing sites and reviewing proposals from more than 800 housing authorities, the nation's housing chief has developed a massive "sweep-up" plan aimed at eliminating drug traffic. Jack F. Kemp, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, planned to present the details today when he joins Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and drug czar William J. Bennett in announcing an action plan for the troubled District of Columbia. In a meeting with reporters, Kemp said he wanted his drug-enforcement proposals for the District of Columbia's public housing to be applied nationally.

Tenants from five public housing developments yesterday began a 15-month training program aimed at enabling them to take over the management of their projects from the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Under the program, which is being sponsored by the nonprofit Housing Association of the Delaware Valley, the tenants will be trained in everything from rent collection to tenant selection and would ultimately assume responsibility for managing their own developments. Similar programs have worked successfully in more than a dozen cities, including St. Louis, Jersey City and Washington, where tenant organizations currently manage public housing developments under contracts with the local housing authorities.

Carl Greene isn't necessarily regarded as the nicest guy in town, but in his 10th year as executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, he is seen as one of the most successful. Among friends and critics alike, he is overwhelmingly credited with single-handedly recasting the look of affordable housing in Philadelphia. Arriving here from Detroit in 1998 at the behest of Mayor Ed Rendell, Greene found an aging stock of public housing, much of it grim high-rises, warrens of crime and decay.

In all of Burlington County's 40 municipalities, there are only three communities that have public housing authorities that offer low-rent or moderate-rent housing to the public at large. "The real story is not that there are three housing authorities but why there are not 40 housing authorities," said John Nolan, executive director of the Burlington City Housing Authority. "Not a day goes by but that somebody from Mount Holly or Willingboro or Browns Mills comes in to our office because they can find no reasonable rental facility.

Through a combination of layoffs, cost cutting, and property sales, the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) hopes to offset by $23.3 million the shortfall in its budget caused by the sequester cuts. At Thursday's board meeting, PHA Commissioner Estelle Richman approved the budget plan for the fiscal year beginning April 1. PHA expects to raise $4 million by selling scattered sites of housing - mostly stand-alone rowhouses and vacant lots. The agency will reduce overhead through savings on its insurance policy, $2.6 million, and reductions in administrative costs, $6 million.

The 26-year-old mother's screams for help Tuesday afternoon attracted everyone's attention on the sixth floor of the West Park Apartments on Busti Street. A fire had broken out in Tasha Rose's apartment while she was at a trash incinerator at the West Philadelphia complex, and two of her sons - ages 3 and 4 - were trapped inside. The mother and a male neighbor rushed inside and grabbed 3-year-old Tyheed. But 4-year-old Tymear could not be found amid the heat and smoke, which forced the adults out of the apartment.

Two weeks after taking charge of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the interim chief has removed two senior staffers, including a close aide to deposed Executive Director Carl R. Greene. PHA confirmed that Shelley James, Greene's former chief of staff, left the agency Friday. A lawyer, she joined PHA in 2003 and was paid $163,000 a year. Also out is Keith Caldwell, a 14-year veteran who managed 300 employees in operations and oversaw conventional public housing as well as the Section 8 rent-voucher program.

Twenty-five years after she was charged with welfare fraud, Asia Coney, a tenant leader in the Philadelphia Housing Authority, has paid restitution of $2,974.50 for the offense. In 1987, Coney, known at the time as Lillian Coney, was one of 34 current and former city employees accused of collecting state welfare benefits while on the city payroll. The city's probation department sued Coney in 1993 for not paying restitution - and finally collected its fine this week. Coney was in the Criminal Justice Center briefly Wednesday to settle the matter.

DEAR MICHAEL KELLY, Thanks a lot for nothing. Your affair with a female co-worker that led to your resignation this week was just about the worst miscalculation that a PHA boss could make, especially one whose job was to clean up and restore integrity following the Carl Greene scandal. We're sure this is a trauma for you and your family, but we thought it fair to remind you just how much damage this indiscretion has created for those you left behind: In case you're not aware, public housing is not exactly on the top-10 lists of popular public institutions.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority plans to award a three-year contract for $510,000 to a resident group run by Asia Coney, a tenant leader whose e-mails and other records were subpoenaed in 2010 by a federal grand jury. Coney, an ally of ousted PHA executive director Carl R. Greene, previously was the $108,000-a-year director of Tenant Support Services Inc. (TSSI), a nonprofit affiliate of the housing authority that ran programs aimed at empowering tenants, including finding them work.

As she pulls glue off a metal scraper while laying tiles in a second-floor bedroom of a Camden public housing unit, 17-year-old Briana Russ brushes her bangs to the side with her forearm. "I like painting, but this is difficult," Russ says, shaking glue off her fingers. The Camden teen is in the middle of her construction training through YouthBuild, an alternative education program for high school dropouts ages 16 to 24 that provides classroom instruction and occupational-skills training.

The Obama administration's effort to help three million distressed borrowers refinance into FHA-backed, lower-rate mortgages still faces one big hurdle: Congress. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, in Philadelphia on Friday for a summit on housing policy and related issues at the University of Pennsylvania, said without congressional action to expand the Federal Housing Administration to accommodate so many loans, "there's nothing we can do" for these borrowers.