Some of this region's bitterest clashes over low-income housing choices and stressed neighborhoods have converged on the unlikely battleground of English Woods, a World War II-era public housing complex on Cincinnati's West Side. On Oct. 15, Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority filed to sue the federal housing department as part of a federal lawsuit in which English Woods residents are suing CMHA. The way out of this thicket is more likely to be through collaboration than litigation.

CMHA found its plan to demolish and redevelop English Woods blocked by heated objections from residents, Mayor Charlie Luken, city council, U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot and nearby community councils, so now CMHA director Donald Troendle is suing to force HUD to approve relocation and demolition funds.

"Who does he think he is?" asks Councilman John Cranley, a West-sider. "Every dime he's asking for is our tax money. It's too much too fast."

Troendle runs one of the most highly rated housing authorities in the nation and champions countywide housing choice for low-income families, but choice worked against him at English Woods. Remaining residents want the units renovated rather than demolished, and nearby neighborhoods don't want another wave of subsidized low-income renters descending on them, if English Woods is bulldozed.

Built in 1940-41, English Woods is outdated. CMHA argues in its lawsuit that residents already voted with their feet, as seen in the 58 percent vacancy rate among 702 units, and it would cost about $90 million, over $128,000 per unit, to renovate up to HUD standards and the Ohio Building Code. Cranley accuses CMHA of making English Woods unattractive so it does empty out, and he argues Troendle could consolidate the occupied units there, and start redeveloping the rest.

CMHA's redevelopment of the West End and the folding of Denhart's building-based Section 8 rentals in Over-the-Rhine required hundreds of families to relocate. Community councils in Price Hill, Westwood, Northside, Mount Airy and College Hill say they absorbed most of them. Families went where the rentals are, to the middle-class West Side. A compromise pact struck last March between CMHA and city council called for leveling off the number of families with portable housing vouchers at 7,300 for a year and a half. The city is still seeking a waiver from HUD to apply caps on subsidized rentals at large apartment complexes.

What kind of "housing choice" is it if low-income families surge to just a few neighborhoods and destabilize them? The city and CMHA need to find an English Woods solution outside of court and collaborate with the county on breaking up ghettoes and dispersing low-income families more evenly throughout the region.