Tucson Weekly: Poor-House Shuffle (September 18

The Debate Over Tucson's Oldest Housing Project Continues
By Tim Vanderpool
THERE'S NO MENTAL leaping, no aesthetic sleight-of-hand, that could paint Connie Chambers a pretty place. It is not. Instead, Tucson's oldest public housing project is a drab, crime plagued, 200-unit, two-story sprawl on the western flanks of downtown's Barrio Santa Rosa, displaying all the charm of a vacant storefront.
Ramshackle curtains cover warped window panes. Yards, where they exist, are mostly weed-fringed dirt. Laundry hangs like wilted wildflowers over faltering balconies, and clusters of trash skitter up windswept drives.
Still, there is life here, marked by the bustling recreation center, lush murals covering streetside walls, and clutches of kids dashing across a tiny playground. There's also controversy, in the form of a $14.6 million federal grant that either could give Connie Chambers a new face, or obliterate the circa-1967 complex.
Currents The hard-won money arrived in October under the Hope VI program, awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But just how it will be spent has laid bare community fears with roots going back 30 years, to the dark days when much of historic old Tucson was razed in the name of urban renewal. Under that infamous policy, hundreds of mostly minority families were torn from their longtime homes, which were replaced with modern, bland behemoths like City Hall and the Tucson Convention Center.
By most accounts, it was a very sad chapter for Tucson. And according to current critics, history is about to repeat itself if the city forges ahead with plans to decimate Connie Chambers. Either way, they say, the hefty Hope VI cash will ultimately do little to assist some 30,000 poverty-stricken local families now on public housing waiting lists.
As it now stands, the City Community Services Department is expected to recommend the complex be replaced with a combination of public housing, apartments renting at or near market value, and units that could be purchased at subsidized rates.
Opponents call that plan a crime.
"The Chicano community in Tucson believes there's been a 30-year policy of urban renewal here that's never stopped," says Jody Gibbs, an architect and member of the Inner City Forum. "Under urban renewal, the city said, 'We want HUD money, and when we get it, we'll tear down the housing stock that was serving low-income minority people.'
"And what did they do? They built the Convention Center, a new city hall, county buildings, La Placita Village."
Gibbs says the same strategy is happening again, under the unspoken banner of gentrification. The idea is hardly far-fetched: Today, many homes being built or renovated in the newly fashionable vicinity of Connie Chambers carry price tags in the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. And the barrio's privileged, latter-day espresso set probably aren't thrilled to find poor public housing folks on their doorsteps, he says.
"This time, what the city is planning to do with the HUD money is tear down Connie Chambers, reconcentrating 60 units of public housing on the site at higher rents, and building or buying another 130 units in other areas of the city," Gibbs says. "The reasoning, HUD's reasoning in my opinion, is if you throw out the people that are lowest income, you will not have these image problems with public housing. That may be true, but you've also thrown some very poor people out on the street."
Gibbs calls it a blatant violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, which forbids using federal money for gentrification.
Hector Morales, a city council member during Tucson's urban renewal sweep in the '60s, an appointed HUD official during the Carter administration, and current director of the El Pueblo Clinic, says destroying Connie Chambers would be a "disaster."
"I tried to stop urban renewal when I was on the council," he says. "I had families come to me, and I tried to help them. But the council refused to give them a break. I see the same thing happening now."
He says it's very unlikely any low-income housing would be resurrected on the site if Connie Chambers were demolished. "What will happen is that the city is going to eventually say it can't afford to rebuild there. Then speculators will move in, build homes for upper-income people, and gentrification will hit Santa Rosa like a steamroller."
Some current city council members are also concerned that Connie Chambers residents could get shafted if their complex is leveled. However, Councilman Steve Leal calls Morales' scenario "a bit of a stretch," saying, "Over my dead body would that happen.
"But there hasn't been quite enough of a public process with it," Leal adds. As for forcing low-income minorities out of the increasingly upscale neighborhood, "That's one concern we all have. I have a concern that, once the city is done with the brick and mortar, once the ribbon-cutting is done, they're gone. What I want to see are new programs there, to make any new facility come to life."
Councilman José Ibarra says he informed his staff to go back into the neighborhood, in an attempt to gather consensus on what should be done. He says he's tried to schedule more public meetings on the plan, only to be repeatedly thwarted by a four-member council majority consisting of Mayor George Miller, Janet Marcus, Shirley Scott and Michael Crawford.
IRONICALLY, IBARRA, who himself has lately gained mean-spirited fame by booting homeless squatters from their camps, says some city officials are hoping to "hang their hats" on seeing Connie Chambers bite the dust.
He doesn't name names. He doesn't have to--Gibbs and Morales both point to Karen Thoreson, director of Community Services, who's currently running for vice president of the powerful National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officers. ("She wants to show her colleagues how she's changing the face of Tucson," says Morales.)
Those critics say Thoreson's plan to destroy the complex sits well with the Republican Congress' move to gut public housing, and with the city council's pro-demolition majority. They claim Thoreson is quite tight with the Mayor, and that her agenda also fits in nicely with the city's developer faction, who, they allege, are her golfing buddies.
For his part, Mayor Miller says he plays racquetball, and thus has never witnessed Thoreson sharing the greens with developers. Either way, "I don't think the final decision has been made" regarding Connie Chambers, Miller says. "There has been council guidance through the whole thing."
Thoreson admits vying for the NAHRO post--despite allegedly contrary statements to some council members. But she denies doing 18 holes with any land rapers. And she says her department's recommendation that the council approve demolishing Connie Chambers will only help Tucson's poor.
That recommendation is soon expected to come up for a vote.
"Right now there are 200 units at Connie Chambers," she says. "Out of those, 191 are for housing, and the rest are used for things like daycare. When this new project is complete, 200 sites will be scattered throughout the community, including the Santa Rosa neighborhood."
She says residents wanting to remain in Santa Rosa will be accommodated, with the same subsidized rental guidelines used at Connie Chambers. According to Thoreson, renovating the existing apartments would cost nearly 80 percent of the cost to rebuild, and that either way, Hope VI money can't be tapped to expand Tucson's overall number of public housing units. "There's no ongoing subsidy for that," she says.
Thoreson also cites money contained in the grant for programs ranging from job training to GED classes. "There's a real opportunity here for people to get more from their lives," she says.
Sitting atop this crumbling quandary, at least in Arizona terms, is Terry Goddard, former Phoenix mayor and gubernatorial candidate, and now state HUD coordinator. Goddard says Connie Chambers doesn't necessarily have to come down--at least not completely.
"I'd be particularly upset if that gym was torn down," he says. "But HUD has, as a basic tenet, changing the face of public housing. Most of the big complexes around the country have been demolished." But he says Connie Chambers doesn't fit snugly into the national stereotype of rancid project wastelands spanning countless acres.
"It's not modern, but it's in better shape than most, and it's not a booming monster," he says.
Goddard says when he related Tucson's political scrap over Connie Chambers to Washington, he was met with anger. "There was apprehension that Tucson was going to try to skate out of its obligation, and try to reconcentrate housing in the same area. A lot of cities get this money, and then try to reconstitute their former, concentrated areas of public housing."
But that doesn't seem to be the case in Tucson, he says, and anyway, Hope VI contracts stipulate that cities "can't just turn around and sell the properties. That's the worst-case scenario, and I sincerely doubt it could happen here."
Regardless of who wins the fight, he says HUD "is opposed to gentrification of that neighborhood. Our goal is to stabilize that neighborhood for the people who are there.
"Our first commitment is to the people of Connie Chambers. Our second commitment is to the integrity of the community around Connie Chambers."

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