BY CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati's housing authority will receive a multimillion-dollar grant today to demolish the West End's Lincoln Court apartments and replace the housing complex with a smaller, mixed-income development, The Cincinnati Enquirer has learned.
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The money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will help clear the way for the biggest residential construction project in inner-city Cincinnati since World War II. Proponents of the plan say it will help remove the ghetto stigma of crowded public housing and revitalize the neighborhood. Critics see the plan as a thinly veiled attempt to cut housing for the poor while letting developers take over the West End.
Some Lincoln Court residents have been handing out fliers this week calling for a rally Saturday against the proposed demolition. "Save Lincoln Courts and Stop the Wrecking Ball!" the flier declares. The grant comes from the federal "Hope VI" program, which provides money to tear down dilapidated low-income public housing. Under the program, residents are given the option of staying in the new development or accepting vouchers to cover the cost of apartments elsewhere.
Hope VI grants have been awarded since the early 1990s to housing authorities across the country but never to the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA).
The CMHA requested $31 million from Hope VI in June for its $62 million plan to demolish the 53 buildings at Lincoln Court. It is not clear whether HUD will grant the full request. Most projects approved in other cities this year have received full funding. The CMHA already has $6.1 million from the city and plans to raise the remaining money through tax credits, bank loans and other sources.
HUD's response was not expected until October, said Donald Troendle, CMHA executive director. However, Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo has been crisscrossing the country since last week awarding Hope VI grants to cities from Los Angeles to Atlanta.
Mr. Cuomo is scheduled to visit Cincinnati today and present the grant at a ceremony at CMHA offices, 1635 Western Ave., at 2 p.m., housing sources told The Enquirer.
Mr. Troendle would not comment Wednesday on the visit or the grant award. The CMHA applied for Hope VI money in each of the last two years to revamp Lincoln Court, but it was denied both times. The CMHA plan calls for replacing Lincoln Court with a much smaller complex of modern town houses, most of them for public housing but some of them market-rate apartments. Under the plan, a private developer, awarded a contract by CMHA, would build and own the buildings, while CMHA would retain control of the land, except for the market-rate homes.
Demolition of Lincoln Court could begin as early as next summer and would require more than 2,000 people to move out of their homes, according to the CMHA grant application.
Despite written assurances from the CMHA that all residents will be given the opportunity to stay in the new Lincoln Court, some fear they will be forced to leave the traditionally poor, black neighborhood.
"A lot of us feel that we have been lied to, that we've been sold out," said Etonia Harbut, 40, who has lived at Lincoln Court for nine years."
The West End Community Council and African-American activists have opposed the plan from the start.
"They (CMHA) are making false promises to the residents," said Ernie Waits, an African-American activist who said he is working with some Lincoln Court residents to file a lawsuit to stop the project. But in addition to CMHA management and the majority of city council, the plan has the support of the Legal Aid Society, Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) and the Lincoln Court Resident Council.
"I understand that this is a big change for people, but over the years, opponents will start to change their minds about the project. It will lead to the betterment of the community," said Marquicia Jones, president of the resident council. "We endorsed it. We caught all kinds of hell for doing that, but we endorsed it because it's a good plan."
The Lincoln Court plan calls for a reduction of housing units from 886 to about 500, and more than 150 of those units are expected to be market-rate. People who do not stay at Lincoln Court would receive housing certificates to move elsewhere.
Lincoln Court opened with great fanfare in 1943 as what CMHA officials declared was a "Negro housing project" of 1,015 units. The project was built after the CMHA demolished rundown private buildings on the site. The cost of Lincoln Court was $5.7 million. From its opening, Lincoln Court has been CMHA's largest public housing complex, though Laurel Homes and a Laurel Homes Annex are larger if combined as one unit. Today, after remodeling reduced it to 886 units, Lincoln Court makes up 12 percent of all of CMHA housing. The project's population has remained overwhelmingly black and poor throughout its five decades. By 1997, 99.6 percent of the people there were black. More than 67 percent of the households earned less than $10,000 last year.
In its application for Hope VI, the CMHA labeled the buildings and infrastructure as "severely deteriorated and obsolete." In last year's fiscal budget, maintenance and repairs for Lincoln Court cost the CMHA $1.35 million, about 17 percent of the housing authority's entire maintenance budget.
