The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) is proposing to demolish Lincoln Court apartments, the city's largest public housing project, and replace them with modern townhouses for poor, middle-class and wealthy families.
Under the $48 million plan, about 2,000 residents would be displaced, at least temporarily, from the West End community.
The project, which will be submitted June 29 to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for funding, would be the largest residential project in downtown Cincinnati in more than half a century and a major transformation of the West End, long a pocket of urban blight and high crime.
Donald Troendle, CMHA's executive director, said the authority is making its proposal because Lincoln Court is dying.
"People will not live in Lincoln Court anymore," he said. "The buildings are old and were constructed cheaply. Today they are unrentable, functionally and physically obsolete."
The proposal is first time that CMHA -- the nation's 17th-largest housing authority -- has recommended replacing one of its major projects for poor families with a mixed-income neighborhood, including privately owned homes.
The plan would reduce the number of housing units on the 22.4-acre site from 886 to about 500. On Monday night, the Lincoln Court Resident Council endorsed the demolition and rebuilding, but said it wanted 600 housing units on the site for low-income families.
Mr. Troendle said that of 886 housing units at Lincoln Court, about 740 are occupied and the number is dropping every week. However, Lincoln Court still accounts for more than 10 percent of all the people living in CMHA housing.
"Last month we had 40 families move out and four move in," he said.
CMHA submitted a proposal to HUD's HOPE VI urban renewal program last year that would have demolished only some of the buildings and kept all the remaining housing for low-income families. But HUD, which in recent years has shifted policy away from supported concentrations of poor families, rejected that proposal.
This new proposal "is a large, complex deal," Mr. Troendle said. "But I'm hopeful that we'll get the grant. . . . This year we are really embracing the principles guiding the HOPE VI program." With the creation of the HOPE VI program in 1993, HUD has tried to have housing authorities create mixed-income neighborhoods. Proposals, usually including destruction of traditional block-type housing, have been funded in other cities including San Francisco, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis and Knoxville.
Marquicia Jones, Lincoln Court's resident council president, said she was initially skeptical of the CMHA proposal, fearing that after demolition poor Lincoln Court residents would be pushed out to make way for middle-class homeowners.
But her council conducted an exhaustive survey of the residents -- and found that most supported demolition and almost half wanted to receive federal rental vouchers to move away.
"That really surprised me," she said. "I didn't know so many people were so dissatisfied, even despite all the drugs and crime. So in principle now, we support the (demolition) proposal."
Residents interviewed Tuesday agreed.
"They really need to be torn down because we have all kinds of electrical and water problems," said Barbara Robinson, 51, who has lived in Lincoln Court for 2 1/2 years. "They are just old."
Denise Crawford, 40, who has lived in the complex for more than five years, said she wanted the old brick buildings torn down because the hallways have become havens for drugs and crime.
"I would like new buildings," she said. "Sometimes now you are afraid to leave your apartment because you don't know who is in the hallway or what's going on."
The new townhouses would have open, individual entrances and not shared hallways.
If the proposal is funded this year (CMHA will be notified in October), the authority plans to begin moving residents out of Lincoln Court by August of next year. Construction would begin immediately and new housing could be ready for occupancy as early as January 2001. The entire project would not be completed until about 2003.
Lincoln Court was constructed on swampland filled in with bricks during World War II. Built to temporarily house returning soldiers and their families before they could find more permanent housing, Lincoln Court instead became home to generations of Cincinnati's poor.
The new proposal calls for razing all of these buildings. In their place would rise about 65 rows of townhouses. The townhouses would each have their own garages and street lighting.
They would all be set in cul de sacs to increase security. One hundred of these units would be sold to homeowners, 50 at market rate and 50 with some kind of subsidy for poorer families. Another 200 units would be rented to poor families by CMHA, much as Lincoln Court apartments are now, according to Mr. Troendle.
Another 100 apartments would be subsidized for poor families with state tax credits, and 100 would be rented at market rate. In addition to the townhouses, a 54-unit building for frail elderly residents is being proposed.
The plan calls for the expansion and extension of Cutter and Clark streets, which intersect the property. The streets would become wide, tree-lined boulevards under the plan.
The $48 million project would be mostly funded by HOPE VI. CMHA plans to ask for about $35 million. Mr. Troendle said about $3.7 million of that would be used for learning and job programs for residents. CMHA will also ask city council to allocate between $5 million and $6 million of its federal housing money for infrastructure improvements and a community center.
CMHA hopes to get the remaining money from Ohio tax credits, mortgages and nonprofit groups like Downtown Cincinnati Inc.
Controversy brews
HUD's HOPE VI program has been controversial since its inception. While housing advocates have applauded the effort to get rid of huge dilapidated apartment complexes, they don't like the math. HOPE VI, for all of its stated intentions, often means fewer housing units for the poor -- in most cases a lot fewer.
John Schrider, a Legal Aid attorney working for the Lincoln Court Resident Council, said he is worried that CMHA is working to reduce units and bring in families with more money. The ultimate losers in such a proposal could be the poor, he said.
He said the idea of 100 homes being sold in a reborn Lincoln Court, or whatever its new name would be, could let wealthy people find nice downtown housing at the expense of the poor, the majority of whom are black. Near Lincoln Court are Citirama and Betts Longworth, two city-supported residential restoration projects that have brought wealthier homeowners, most of them white, into the West End.
"All houses are affordable," he said. "But affordable to whom? . . . CMHA shouldn't lose track of who HOPE VI is suppose to help: low-income families."
Mr. Troendle said CMHA hasn't forgotten its principal mission is to house the poor. But government has moved away from concentrating the poor in large developments like Lincoln Court, he said. This proposal would be a shift away from old policies. He said such change was not only unavoidable, it was preferable for Cincinnati.
"Why shouldn't CMHA help meet the city's goal of creating a larger tax base in the city?" he said. "Why shouldn't CMHA help meet the city's goal of more home ownership?"
If the HOPE VI money is not approved this year, Mr. Troendle said CMHA would simply try again next year. For Mr. Troendle, the demise of Lincoln Court is not a matter of if, but when.
"They have to go," he said. "People just won't live in them anymore."
Ms. Robinson, leaning out of her window of her Lincoln Court two-bedroom apartment, said she wouldn't be sorry to see her building go, but she hoped that she would be able to move into whatever replaced them.
"I would like it, but only if I was able to come back," she said.
