Architecture and HOPE VI

 Building Housing or Barriers to Housing?

- by John McLaren, Architect and Planner

(Originally written for publication in architectural journal for audience of architects and planner - John McLaren now manages design, planning, and construction of public schools for the Olympia School District)

I - Introduction

“The thirty-acre site has been redefined from a place of barely livable housing ‘projects’, into a traditional neighborhood of both rental and home ownership housing.  The design of the units is reminiscent of the city's traditional architecture and offers low and middle-income families, who otherwise wouldn't have the option of home ownership, brand new homes with contemporary amenities.  The community has been designed to also attract more working class families and create a diverse mix of income levels.  The change in environment is striking, as the architects took an area that was suffering and gave it new life as a residential community with a family feeling.”[1]

This glowing AIA description of an award-winning Public Housing redevelopment doesn’t mention that of the 462 units destroyed, only 297 were built in their place, of which only 185 were Public Housing, producing a net loss of 60 percent in Public Housing units.[2]  The article also doesn’t mention the federal subsidy commitment that vanished forever with the lost units.  Nor does it explore what happened to the displaced tenants and those on the waiting lists.  Not to mention that, as one former resident of the community said, the whole place “could have been renovated.  They had [previously] modernized the kitchens and bathrooms.  They had put in new windows, screens, and screen doors.  They had put in a new boiler and thermostats.  They were good, steady buildings.”[3] 

The same pattern of Public Housing demolition, accompanied by a steady stream of accolades from trade and professional organizations and mainstream media, has been occurring nationwide as the result of a housing “revitalization” program called HOPE VI.  While the “HOPE” in HOPE VI stands for “Home Ownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere”, the program as it is being implemented will produce a nationwide net loss of over 50,000 Public Housing units once affordable to low-income families desperately in need of this resource. 

Here in the Pacific Northwest, in 1992, the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) and a number of other City and County agencies conducted a series of charrettes on the larger Public Housing garden communities in the area.  The results were summarized in a report entitled “Breaking Down the Barriers”[4].  This document showed how the garden communities, comprising well over 2,000 units of Public Housing in Seattle alone, could have been revitalized in ways that would have increased security and generated a greater sense of ownership and pride in the communities, while also preserving 100% of the existing Public Housing units.

Proposed solutions included new community centers and gardens, preservation of open space and trees, and sensitive alterations and additions to existing townhouse and apartment buildings, all accompanied by a broad range of enhanced supportive services.  The renovated communities would have been designed by resident groups working closely with SHA and its design consultants, using defensible space[5] [6] planning principles that were at the time being used around the country to revitalize public and privately held low income housing.  “Breaking Down the Barriers” was published in 1992.  Its recommendations never went much farther than the planting of a few community pea patches.

Since 1993, most HUD funding available for Public Housing redevelopment came through the HOPE VI program, which with few exceptions has come to favor a “mixed income” model of gentrification, typically achieved through whole-site demolition, combined with the dispersal and displacement of very low-income families.  Because Public Housing Authorities (PHA’s) generally match their programs and policies to whatever funding programs are available from HUD, the “Breaking Down the Barriers” model never gained momentum in Seattle, having been displaced by HOPE VI.  Other Public Housing revitalization models, such as the Boston Housing Authority’s successful Commonwealth Apartments renovation[7], also fell by the wayside.

The point of this essay is not to defend the many alternatives to Hope VI, nor to defend the Public Housing program[8].  The purpose is simply to look behind the HOPE VI curtain, to show how HOPE VI is promoted by the architectural profession, and to suggest how the profession’s influence can be used to promote reforms of the program. 

II - HOPE VI

HOPE VI, HUD’s multi-billion dollar Public Housing redevelopment program, is promoted as a near panacea for all the woes of Public Housing from Sarasota to Seattle.  Critics of the program see it more as a Trojan horse designed to further the elimination of Public Housing. 

During the late 80’s, HUD was studying the most problematic Public Housing communities around the country, the most notorious of which were high-rise projects such as Cabrini Green in Chicago.  The result of these studies was a program called the Urban Revitalization Demonstration, which later became HOPE VI.[9]  The current stated purpose of the HOPE VI program is to revitalize what HUD considers to be the most “severely distressed” Public Housing communities across the country – comprising about 100,000 housing units - by converting them into pedestrian friendly, mixed-income neighborhoods intended to fit well into the urban fabric.  Included in this vision are new community centers and other amenities, coupled with enhanced supportive services.[10]

Originally, in 1993, the program included the requirement – backed up by federal law and federal funds – that HOPE VI projects would not result in a net loss of Public Housing units.  By 1997, prior to the implementation of the first demonstration projects, a neoconservative Congress removed this “no net loss” requirement, along with federal funding supporting it.  With this simple switch, HOPE VI became a means of removing nearly 50,000 units of this country’s most affordable and most deeply subsidized housing, many of them still restorable, as well as the federal subsidy commitments attached to them.  According to “False Hope”, a report on HOPE VI by the national Housing Law Project and others, the “country is facing an estimated net loss of over 107,000 Public Housing units through demolition”[11], about half of which will be due to HOPE VI demolitions.  It is this net loss of the country’s most affordable and most deeply subsidized housing, and the implicit policy precedent supporting this net loss, that has most concerned housing advocacy organizations around the country.

III - HOPE VI Reform Recommendations

In a Washington Post editorial on HOPE VI, an architect poses the question "Why not make the program work rather than killing it?"[12]  The writer then proposes to "fix its defects" through "architectural excellence”.  His perspective is instructive in that it’s typical of the professional architectural community’s perspective on HOPE VI.  While there are exceptions,[13] AIA documents, planning and design award programs, New Urbanism screeds, and professional journal articles for the most part accept HOPE VI as a given (not to mention as a great professional opportunity for designers and planners), as if the social costs are either irrelevant, regrettable but unavoidable, or simply to be considered “by others”. 

There is little discussion among architects of reforms such as those recommended by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and the Center for Community Change (CCC).  As summarized in “False Hope”[14] and also “A Hope Unseen”[15], a recent paper by the CCC, their reform recommendations include the following measures. 

·         HOPE VI must not result in the net loss of Public Housing units in the metropolitan district to which HOPE VI funding is targeted.  Replacement units must be constructed on the HOPE VI site or in other neighborhoods with access and services and amenities equal to that of the redevelopment.

·         A clearer definition of "severely distressed" housing must be developed to avoid demolition of viable housing.  The definition should be created “in collaboration with public housing residents, housing advocates, housing experts, and others.”[16]  Seattle is a good example of the need for this particular reform.  According to the Seattle Displacement Coalition, the housing at Rainier Vista, High Point, Roxbury Village, and Holly Park could have been renovated for far lower cost, preventing the net loss of over 1,000 of Seattle's most affordable Public Housing units.[17]

·         All original households should be encouraged to return to communities "revitalized" under HOPE VI.  PHA’s must go beyond the Uniform Relocation Act in order to meet the purposes of the HOPE VI program and to reduce the emotional and physical strain and trauma of relocation.

·         Public Housing Authorities (PHA's) must involve residents of impacted properties in the HOPE VI application and implementation process in meaningful ways,[18] as opposed to the ersatz participation that appears to be the general rule.  HUD should be required to issue regulations governing the administration of HOPE VI redevelopment activities, which should provide enforceable, on-going rights of resident participation.

It is also important to consider the impact of HOPE VI on other funding sources and subsidies.  HOPE VI projects are frequently funded not only through HOPE VI, but also with local and other federal funds, amounting to twice to three times the HOPE VI contribution.  In Seattle, for example, such funds include city housing levy monies, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, HUD 202 funds for low income elderly and disabled, and project based Section 8 allotments, among other sources.  Instead of being used to expand the stock of housing needed for very low-income families, these types of funding are being funneled into expensive HOPE VI redevelopment projects that typically produce a 50% or more net loss of Public Housing units. 

For the most part, these other funding sources would be used in the same metropolitan areas as the HOPE VI projects to which they are diverted.  But this doesn’t prevent many housing authorities from renaming the units produced with these funds “replacement housing”.  It’s an interesting sort of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” shell game, with numerous versions, and is played by PHA’s across the country as a means of promoting the development program to local agencies and the public.  But the fact is that units produced with non-HOPE VI funds aren’t true replacement housing.  An additional reform recommendation should therefore be included in the above list:

·         Only HUD-funded Public Housing units, at the same levels of affordability as those destroyed, can be considered replacement housing.

IV - Architects and HOPE VI

Whether they are interested in promoting the HOPE VI program in its current form or reforming it, architects will do so through four modes of influence:  Theory, Method, Technology, and Rhetoric, the latter including the professional awards system.

Theory

Just as designs of the Public Housing high rises now being destroyed under HOPE VI were influenced by the theories of Le Corbusier and Clarence Perry, and a design congress, the CIAM[19], the HOPE VI program is heavily influenced by another set of theorists and a new design congress, the Congress of New Urbanism, or CNU.[20] 

HOPE VI projects are appealing: pedestrian friendly, with effective separation between pedestrian and vehicular traffic, a good definition of public, semi-private and private spaces, and – at least in theory - a nice mix of incomes.  But in describing how HOPE VI projects meet these New Urbanistic design criteria, the CNU typically has very little to say about housing displacement, resident relocation, definitions of “severe distress”, financing of replacement housing, impacts on local funding sources, and the 50 percent net loss of Public Housing that is nearly always the result of these projects. 

Since it became a means of promoting HOPE VI, the CNU has focused on developing the “mixed income” model as a critical component of CNU theory.  But the mixed income model has never been proven.  Rather, the Commonwealth project described by Professor Vale is a good example of how to revitalize Public Housing by effectively organizing Public Housing residents in a way that would not be possible if they were displaced and/or dispersed to facilitate development of a “mixed income” community.[21] [22]  As pointed out by the NHLP et al, “Cast in the worst light, HUD’s HOPE VI mixed income model is a social engineering scheme built on a number of inaccurate, irrelevant, and harmful assumptions about low income families and their neighborhoods.”[23]  Not to mention that the social justice implications of clearing out minority and very low-income communities to make room for more affluent and predominantly white families should not be ignored.

Method

According to HUD’s policies for HOPE VI, “Full resident involvement and community input are crucial elements of the HOPE VI program.  The spirit of the HOPE VI program is one of full consultation and collaboration among the Grantee, affected residents, and the broader community.”[24]

The general criticism, however, of participatory and community design is that most methods are or can be co-optive, co-optable, and not necessarily rational.  They often are used not to promote consensus decision-making, but to achieve buy-in of predetermined strategies.  According to the “False HOPE” and “HOPE Unseen” papers, this appears to be the rule with HOPE VI. 

“HOPE VI redevelopment activities, as actually carried out, often differ dramatically from what PHA’s originally propose in their applications and describe in their trainings and public information sessions….As the HOPE VI program is currently administered, PHA’s have little incentive to comply with promises made to residents, or even to involve residents, after securing resident support in the planning stage.”[25]

The HOPE Unseen paper lists a number of concerns related to co-optive or superficial community planning and participatory design methods:[26]

·         At each of the seven sites, residents encountered significant obstacles to genuine involvement in the HOPE VI application and implementation process.

·         Meetings might have been held, but at each of the sites residents said that the housing authority did not engage them in a genuine or meaningful discussion about the redevelopment plan.

·         Residents at five sites claimed that committees making HOPE VI decisions were not representative of most residents.

·         Many residents felt deceived by promises that they would return to new homes.  As time passed, they concluded that they were misled.

·         Although residents were presented with relocation “options” of either Public Housing elsewhere or a housing voucher, many felt that these were not genuine options.

Technology

Perhaps the most important role that architects play in promoting HOPE VI projects is in the field of architectural technology, specifically, in the determination of “severe distress”.  HUD keeps the definition fairly loose, permitting the local PHA to make it’s own determination as to whether or not a project is “severely distressed” enough to warrant complete demolition.  The PHA will make this determination through its architect, so the architect has the power, in effect, to condemn an entire community, displacing every resident except for the lucky few who manage to return some day when the redevelopment is completed.

According to the National Housing Law Project, “As HUD actually administers the HOPE VI program, the definition of ‘severe distress’ is almost an irrelevancy.  A PHA applying for HOPE VI funds needs only to certify that the development for which it seeks HOPE VI funds meets the open-ended definition of ‘severe distress’ set forth in the statute…. Virtually any family public housing development can meet the definition of ‘severe distress’ for HOPE VI purposes”.[27]

Rhetoric and the Awards System

As already noted, most articles on HOPE VI in architectural and planning journals and websites, such as the AIA description of the Monterey Place redevelopment quoted in the introduction, don’t go into much detail, if any, on the problems with HOPE VI.  The tendency is to promote HOPE VI as a great redevelopment opportunity, an excellent application of New Urbanistic planning theory, and a means of improving and demonstrating community design and planning methods. 

V - The Path of Least Resistance

Architects and planners can simply accept HOPE VI as it is currently being implemented and move on.  In the case of HOPE VI, for an architect who believes that we should be eliminating Public Housing, or for whom Public Housing isn’t that high a priority, the path of least resistance to HOPE VI could be the right path for that architect to take.

There is also a more cynical path of least resistance; according to which the architect claims that it’s up to the politicians and policy specialists to decide upon and initiate whatever reforms might be needed.  In the meantime, these projects will be implemented anyway, so there’s a good opportunity for architects and their consultant teams.

VI - The Path of Critical Resistance

As pointed out in False HOPE, “HUD’s refusal to issue formal regulations [of HOPE VI] has frustrated public participation in the HOPE VI program.  A lack of regulations has meant that there has been a lack of clear rules for the program.  This lack of rules has impeded public understanding of the way in which the program operates and has shielded HUD and public housing authorities (PHA’s) from accountability for their activities under HOPE VI.”[28] 

To a large extent, architects and planners have stepped into this regulatory vacuum (along with the public/private development community).  In doing so, they have gained inordinate influence over the HOPE VI program and how it should be implemented.  But they can also use this influence to promote reforms.  For example:

Theory:  An effective housing policy will not promote a net loss of very low income housing.  The Congress of New Urbanism, if it wants to address our national housing crisis, should therefore adopt a no-net-loss policy, stating that urban development and redevelopment actions should not produce a net loss of affordable housing, especially Public Housing.  The CNU should establish a definition of no net loss rigorous enough to exclude Section 8, LIHTC and other forms of less deeply subsidized housing from consideration as replacement housing for Public Housing units destroyed under Hope VI. 

Method:  The CNU, APA, and AIA should adopt rigorous best practices for resident and community participation to help ensure that Public Housing residents are meaningfully involved in PHA decisions concerning their homes and communities.  Such practices should include encouraging investigation of alternatives to housing demolition, and clear and honest presentation of the displacement and financial impacts on residents, those on the waiting lists, and low-income families in surrounding communities and neighborhoods.[29]

Technical Expertise:  The CNU, APA, and AIA should establish a rigorous definition of “severely distressed”, and best practices related to HOPE VI condition surveys and assessments.  The goal should be to establish a definition preventing the destruction of viable Public Housing.

Rhetoric and the Awards system:  The CNU, AIA and APA should actively promote these best practices, honor projects that preserve Public Housing, and stop honoring projects that result in a significant net loss of Public Housing. 

The consulting firms working on HOPE VI are typically the most well connected housing developers, planners and architects in their regions.  In effect, these firms serve to promote the HOPE VI program as it is currently being implemented.  But due to their professional credibility, these same firms could have an enormous impact in promoting reform of the program.

In its effort to minimize the net loss of Public Housing produced by the Rainier Vista HOPE VI project in Seattle, the Friends of Rainier Vista learned that they could appeal the project on NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) grounds.  While they didn’t have the resources to take the appeal all the way to Superior Court, they were able to negotiate a settlement that held the Seattle Housing Authority to a replacement plan outlined in a memorandum of agreement between the City and the Housing Authority.  The replacement plan is not perfect; the project will still produce a net loss of Public Housing Units.  But the project was improved significantly, as was the Holly Park HOPE VI project, which is governed by a similar memorandum of agreement, won through effective advocacy by the Seattle Displacement Coalition and others.  One can’t help but wonder what could have been accomplished if the advocacy effort had been actively supported by Seattle’s architectural and planning community, which for the most part just stepped aside of the debate.

Epilog

The Bush administration has proposed to zero the HOPE VI program out of the 2005 budget.  Whether this happens or not, the recommendations outlined above are still relevant.  If HOPE VI is eliminated, another similar program will likely take its place - HOPE VII perhaps - and the same political pressures to eliminate Public Housing will still exist, as they have from the very beginning of the program in 1937.  Whether or not the program is eliminated, most of the already-funded HOPE VI projects around the country have not been completed and many are still in the planning stage.  There will be plenty of opportunity over the next few years for architects and planners to work for change and set precedents for future reforms.

Return to top                 return to Yesler Terrace Page                   return to main page