COLUMN ONE : Destroying Pockets of Despair : The government is tearing down its troubled housing projects, conceding FDR’s dream has gone awry. Out of the rubble, officials hope to build a system that will revitalize, not trap, its residents.

Dressed in her Sunday best, a broad-brimmed white hat blocking the Southern sun, Dovie Newell is sitting in a lawn chair on the stoop of the downtown apartment she has called home for 21 years.

But this is no ordinary day at the sprawling Techwood Homes complex, the nation’s oldest public housing project. The scores of residents, developers, elected officials and community leaders gathered in the central courtyard are here to bid farewell to an era.

As the voices of politicians drone on about the need for social change, Newell quietly describes the pain and frustration she feels after witnessing the gradual influx of drugs, violence and fear into a community where she once felt no need to lock her doors.

“It has become a deplorable place,” confides the 58-year-old woman, seated beside neighbors and two of her adult children. “If I had young children now, I would not raise them here.”

Before she can finish, someone begins a countdown. All eyes turn to the three-story structure across the street. When the count reaches zero, the bucket of a yellow demolition machine takes the first huge bite of brick and plaster from the building’s side. The crowd cheers.

Newell utters a muffled “Thank you, Jesus.” Then her eyes flood with tears.

The May 12 demolition ceremony was not just a local affair. Techwood is one of 32 projects around the country that have been razed in recent weeks or are slated for complete or partial demolition this year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The destruction of these blighted buildings reflects more than the inevitable cycle of deterioration of aging architecture. It is an acknowledgment of monumental failure, a recognition that the federal government’s original policy of housing the poor in concentrated, subsidized rental units simply hasn’t worked as planned.

The symbolism hangs heavy over Techwood. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the nation’s public housing program here. The New Deal architect presided over the dedication of the tidy brick buildings, neatly arranged around a courtyard. Techwood rose from the rubble of one of Atlanta’s most squalid slums, where 179 dilapidated structures had housed 279 indigent families.

“Today, these hopeless old houses are gone, and in their places we see the bright, cheerful buildings of the Techwood Housing Project,” a beaming Roosevelt declared to an audience of 50,000. “Within a very short time, people who never before could get a decent roof over their heads will live here in reasonable comfort and healthful, worthwhile surroundings.”

The optimism that imbued Roosevelt’s pronouncement has crumbled along with the brick and mortar it spawned. In many ways, the story of Techwood is the story of public housing in general, and the fate of its residents is an accurate indicator of the future direction of federal housing policy.

“Despite Techwood’s auspicious start, failed policies created insurmountable barriers to individual economic independence,” conceded Renee Lewis Glover, executive director of the Atlanta Housing Authority, at the demolition. “By the 1980s, Techwood had returned to the status of the shantytown that President Roosevelt had originally razed to build Techwood.”

Plans for Techwood

Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros spoke of plans by his agency and housing authority officials to reincarnate Techwood as a new model for public housing in America.

“Today is not about tearing down; today is about building up--about creating new opportunity on this physical place,” Cisneros told the crowd. “We need to change communities so that people can live with dignity.”

No longer, he declared, will the nation’s urban poor be congregated in sprawling slums such as Techwood, or isolated in high-rise no-man’s-lands such as Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green complex--another target of the demolition campaign. Once the transformation is complete, traditional clients of public housing will live side by side with lower- to middle-income working people. Some will receive rent subsidies from the government. Others will pay market rates.

At Techwood, it will work like this: The 1,081 units razed this spring will be replaced by about 900 modern, townhouse-like units. Only half will be available to subsidized tenants. The rest will be rented to anyone willing to pay prevailing rates. Until the new units are ready, Techwood residents are being placed in subsidized apartments. Those who want to move back will receive preferential treatment, but many are expected to stay where they are.

Critics predict Washington’s new experiment in social engineering will fail, just as the old one did. Cisneros believes the naysayers have it wrong. Roosevelt’s vision for public housing, he notes, was certainly successful for a time.

Doomed Projects

The golden era for Techwood and other housing projects came during the decades after World War II, when the cost of homeownership dropped and the availability of affordable housing expanded. The projects were relatively clean, and their families tended to be upwardly mobile.

“Public housing at that time in Atlanta was transitional housing,” recalled Davey Gibson, HUD’s regional representative and a 30-year veteran of public housing programs in the city. “People parked themselves while getting ready to buy houses.”

Things began to change in the 1960s, when laws were passed prohibiting officials from continuing the once-common practice of barring single mothers and welfare recipients from their complexes. Increasingly, new tenants were families headed by single mothers. Many were receiving public assistance, and their economic prospects were bleak. For them, Techwood was a permanent solution. By the 1970s, the balance had tipped, and single-parent families represented the majority of public housing dwellers.

The complexion of some housing developments changed even more with integration. Techwood, for example, was an all-white project until 1968, when the first black families were admitted. Before then, blacks in Atlanta were housed in a separate complex of their own.

Across the country, housing projects were sucked into a slow, downward spiral. The drug trade flourished, bringing with it gangs and violence. Police protection proved inadequate. Gradually, the sense of community disintegrated. Law-abiding residents, particularly the elderly and disabled, became afraid to leave their buildings--even in daylight.

Some activists believe the projects were doomed from the start. Public housing was politically unpopular, and no one wanted housing projects near their neighborhoods. Many cities placed them in slum districts, where the gleaming new complexes were surrounded by urban blight. Even today, political pressure against moving poor people into middle-class neighborhoods remains strong.

The decline of public housing was exacerbated by unintended consequences of federal policies. Eligibility rules were changed by Congress to target assistance more narrowly at the poorest Americans. Among the results: Tenants were rewarded for staying unemployed. It made economic sense for an employed spouse to live apart from the family. America’s underclass--marked by chronic unemployment and government dependency--became more entrenched.

Rewriting the Rules

During his first visit to Techwood soon after becoming HUD chief in 1993, Cisneros approached a couple and their children. How nice it was, he remarked, to see a two-parent family strolling the grounds of a public housing project.

The father’s reply? He tried to stop by Techwood every day to visit his wife and children. He told Cisneros that he had moved out after landing a well-paying temporary job. If he had stayed, the rent would have been bumped up so much that the family would have had to leave public housing. Although they probably could have afforded it, he was afraid to do so because his job was temporary.

Family values, project-style.

Cisneros is trying to persuade Congress to change the law so rent increases would not be allowed for 18 months after a resident got a job. But rewriting the rules will not cure the ills of the worst projects, he noted. That’s a task for wrecking balls and explosives.

So far this year, Cisneros has witnessed plenty of each. He watched as the five towers of the 40-year-old Raymond Rosen Apartments in Philadelphia, which once housed 530 families, were reduced to rubble by explosives. He watched as St. Louis’ nine-story, 656-unit Vaughn Apartments, which HUD’s own literature blames for eating away “like cancer at the remaining neighborhood structure,” were leveled. His schedule includes demolition ceremonies in Milwaukee; Baltimore; Newark, N.J.; Chicago, San Antonio, New Orleans, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

The demolition at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green complex, near downtown skyscrapers and the posh shopping district, is likely to receive attention because of the project’s reputation as one of the most troubled. Just last week, HUD took control of the 100,000-resident Chicago Housing Authority to try to get it back on track after years of failed local initiatives.

Voucher Program

Under HUD’s master plan for revitalizing demolished project sites, some residents will return to mixed-income rental “neighborhoods” maintained by the government. Others will use vouchers to subsidize rents in private housing.

In theory, all of the HUD-administered programs have the same bottom line for clients: Monthly payments are based on a sliding scale, with each family expected to devote 30% of its income to rent and the government picking up the rest.

Under the voucher program, the government’s share is the difference between 30% of a family’s income and a HUD-calculated fair market rental rate for an entire city. If a family cannot find acceptable private-sector housing at that amount, it must come up with the additional money itself. Affordable-housing advocates express concern about the added financial risk borne by voucher recipients, although it appears the formula has been workable enough to prevent widespread problems.

The objective of the new wave of public housing programs is to place the poor in economically integrated communities instead of segregating them inside more projects.

Many at Techwood clearly share the dream.

“We have been waiting so long for this,” said Grace Griffin, a longtime resident. “We’ve seen people murdered in their homes here. It’s a peace of mind to know that it’s going to be better when we do decide to come back.”

But others express doubts about the whole concept of mixed-income neighborhoods.

“I’m skeptical that the different incomes will get along together,” said resident Arthur Gray, 39, who is disabled by sickle-cell anemia. “Those who pay market rate will be resentful of lower-income residents here who don’t pay as much. It will bring hostility.”

Nonetheless, Gray said, he looks forward to the change because it will mean he will no longer be afraid to go to the corner store in his wheelchair.

For some residents, the dangers they know are less frightening than the future they don’t.

“I don’t know what’s coming next,” acknowledged Annette Swinger, a waitress who has lived at Techwood for nearly half of her 48 years.

“We’re going out of here, that’s for sure. Where are we going? We don’t know. It’s scary when you don’t know where you are going.”

She is not alone. Across the country, public housing residents are expressing opposition to the voucher concept. If the government’s commitment is reduced to a slip of paper--rather than the walls and plumbing and heat they have come to rely on--it can be much more easily abandoned.

“We want to keep our apartments. We don’t want vouchers,” said Millicent Moore, a resident of Cleveland’s Garden Valley Estates project. Moore traveled to Washington by bus with hundreds of other public housing residents this spring to make her feelings known.

“That voucher program is not going to work,” added Pam Davidson, 42, another project resident from Cleveland. “There’s no guarantee they won’t take it away.”

Affordable-housing advocates hope the government will stand behind the voucher program. But they admit openly what Administration officials quietly concede:

“You don’t have the same kind of economic security,” said Cushing Dolbeare, a longtime housing activist. “People living in public housing are human like the rest of us. Public housing has given poor people the same kind of security that families who are sure they will be able to continue paying their mortgage have. Replacing it with vouchers puts them in the position of families without stable incomes who are trying to pay mortgages.”

Such concerns have been magnified by discussions among Republicans in Congress about not issuing vouchers to new applicants as a way to cut costs. Over time, that would reduce federally subsidized housing units, which now number 5.5 million.

Moving On

At Techwood, some residents dismiss the talk about revitalized public housing altogether. They suspect the real reason the units are being torn down is their proximity to Georgia Tech University, Coca-Cola’s world headquarters and downtown Atlanta, site of the 1996 Olympics.

“They don’t want us here during the Olympics,” declared 46-year-old Caroline Jeffries, who has lived at Techwood for eight years and shares her two-bedroom apartment with a 3-year-old son.

In fact, a small piece of Techwood was razed to provide land for dormitories for Olympic athletes. The faux-colonial high-rises will be inherited by Georgia Tech after the Games.

From her stoop at Techwood, Dovie Newell has watched the world change around her.

When she and her five children moved into the complex after her divorce, it still seemed like a safe place to raise a family. “Everybody watched everybody else’s kids.”

Over the years, that sense of security was eaten away by the corrosive effects of crime, drugs, violence, absent parents and unsupervised children.

“People are not like they used to be,” Newell said. “The kids are not disciplined. They’re not raised.”

Newell’s family stayed at Techwood because she was disabled by a job injury. They could not afford to move into non-subsidized housing on her disability check.

Despite the tears she shed at the demolition, Newell is among the believers in Techwood’s coming transformation, and her own. She expects to be able to choose among several private apartment complexes where most of the neighbors would be paying market rent.

“It’s time for me to move on,” Newell said. “I’m as happy as I can be. If I like where they move me, I’ll stay. You’re not going to please everyone, but progress is progress. Move on, or you’ll be left behind.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Portrait of Public Housing

Key figures on the nation’s public housing system: Public housing units: 1.4 million Severely distressed units: 86,000 Vacant units: 100,000 Troubled public housing authorities: 100 HUD public housing budget: $14 billion Public housing population: 3.3 million Percent of elderly: 31% Percent of disabled: 14% Percent on other public assistance: 46% Average annual household income: $7,100 * Note: Figures exclude voucher program and other government-subsidized private housing.

Source: Department of Housing and Urban Development (1994 figures)