LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS
The New Jersey Supreme Court decided the case of Burlington County NAACP v. Township of Mount Laurel in 1975. The court ruled "a developing municipality may not, by a system of land use regulation, make it physically and economically impossible to provide low and moderate income housing in the municipality for various categories of people who need and want it," among other things.
Civil rights attorney Lindsay Jones, in a commentary in the March 15 AJC, writes that several states have adopted the doctrine "as legal precedence in requiring affirmative inclusionary housing policies." However, Georgia Courts have not legally established this standard.
In 1974, Congress passed the Housing and Community Development Act. That act "requires, as a condition of receiving large entitlement federal community development block grants, that communities assess the housing needs of those of lower income residing in, or expected to reside in their jurisdictions based on labor demands," Jones wrote.
Also, advocates are also looking at a recent injunction on the destruction of public housing in New Orleans, which argued those demolitions would violate the right of public housing residents to return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. US Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) also pushed legislation barring the destruction of New Orleans public housing units or requiring that they be replaced with new units.
"Although demolition/disposition activity has always been permitted, HUD and its business partners have begun to actively pursue it as a management strategy option in the last ten years," the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) website says.
Section 18 of the Public Housing Act of 1937 allows for the demolition of public housing.
HUD lists several reasons why developments can be torn down, first among them being this: "The costs associated with bringing the existing development into compliance with current standards are prohibitively expensive."
As far as replacing housing that is torn down, the HUD Web site has this to say: "Except for disposition of developments based on the value of the property, replacement housing plans are no longer required as part of an application for Demolition/Disposition."
VOUCHERS: A TICKET TO NOWHERE
Residents affected by the demolitions will allegedly be offered federal rent-assistance vouchers that are supposed to be good anywhere in the country.
But activists say this is not always the case.
"Vouchers are a ticket to nowhere," Griever told the AHA. "We’re not seeing the vouchers, that are being heavily depended upon in order to relocate people that are in the housing now, will be the answer.”
"Vouchers are an illusion," Terence Courtney of Atlanta Jobs with Justice, told APN. "History tells us less than 20 percent actually get vouchers and find a place to [live]."
Griever told the AHA not all landlords take these vouchers and that they can expire in 90 days if the tenant does not use them.
"There should be enough housing to help everybody with vouchers in their hand but there isn’t," she told APN.
