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Now fewer than half of the 2,100 town-house-style apartments are ^ occupied. Many of the rest have been vandalized by outside gangs. In an attempt to "shrink its $11 million deficit, the public housing authority laid off a quarter of its maintenance staff. The result: a backlog of 9,500 uncompleted work orders. The funds that do get allocated for upkeep have been poorly used. The local authority spent $16 million in federal money over the past two years to install new roofs and windows at Herman Gardens. But at least 320 of these newly repaired units are slated for demolition. Conditions at Chicago's Cabrini-Green have sunk to new depths since former Mayor Jane Byrne spent three highly publicized weeks living there. Soon after Mayor Harold Washington took office, he appointed Renault Robinson, founder of Chicago's Afro-American Patrolmen's League, to run the Chicago housing authority.
Robinson promptly fired 259 repairmen for loafing. But he failed to replace them in time for this winter's subzero cold wave. As a result, boilers shut down and many tenants huddled around space heaters or kitchen stoves. At the nearby ABLA Homes project, a broken sprinkler system flooded the decrepit entrance halls. Many big-city officials feel that the Reagan Administration deserves much of the blame for the persistence of the nation's public housing mess.
"With this Administration, there is always the threat of substantial cuts," says Carl Williams, executive director of San Francisco's housing authority. "You never know from one year to the next how to plan your budget."
Housing officials complain that HUD's operating subsidies are unrealistically low, especially for the bigger projects that consume large amounts of energy. Mayors are miffed at the Administration's refusal to continue President Carter's policy of transferring financially troubled projects to federal authority. In New York City, which took advantage of the federal bail-out during the city's fiscal crisis in the 1970s, the change in policy has translated into an unanticipated $100 million addition to the municipal budget. Tenants are feeling the pinch as well. Under housing legislation passed in 1981, the Administration raised the amount tenants must pay in rent from 25% of income to an eventual ceiling of 30%. But the Administration simultaneously slashed funds for the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and other social-service programs on which many public housing tenants rely for income. These cuts and high unemployment rates left some tenants and authorities worse off than before. Says Sam Hider, executive director of Atlanta's housing authority: "The tenants lose their jobs and have no money, and you can't get it from them." Behind the finger pointing lurks a larger issue:
the proper role of Government in public housing. "The Federal Government has an obligation to see poor people housed," declares San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein.
The Reagan Administration, however, has a hands-off philosophy. "Throwing money at the problem is not the solution," says Warren Lindquist, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Public Housing. "The troubled authorities need better management and more community control."