PSU Magazine Winter 2006

An honorable place to live The Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) was formed in 194 l Lo provide housing for the estimated 25,000 peo– ple moving Lo Portland LO work for the war effort in the new Kaiser Shipyards. With housing tight, workers slept on pool tables in taverns or Look turns, one sleeping nights and the other days, in the same bed. HAP built 18,000 housing units between 1942 and 1944, more than any other housing authority in the nation. One of those projects, Columbia Villa, became a nationally acclaimed model for its livability. "The design for Columbia Villa was considered exemplary," says Karen Gib– son, assistant professor of urban studies and planning. "lt had the attributes of middle-class life with individual units, lots of open space, and a strong sense of community. .. lt was honorable Lo live in Columbia Villa at that time because people who were living there were working." Over Lime, Columbia Villa went through ups and downs, including the arrival of drugs in the ] 980s that resulted in the city's first drive-by shoot– ing. An in0ux of social services helped bring those problems under control, but Columbia Villa's infrastructure-roads, sewers, waler mains-was not aging gracefully. When federal funding became avail– able to demolish Portland's first pub lic housing project, HAP applied. Beginning in 2003, the agency razed the 462 public housing units in Columbia Villa. By December 2006, a total of 854 new units should be com– plete-units that are a mix of public housing (370), elderly housing (66), affordable rental housing (186) and low-cost homes (232). 8 rsu ~1AGAZ1NE WINTER 2006 do with a basic misunderstanding of poverty and poor people by the mid– dle-class , which sets social policy. Leslie Esinga, a HAP liaison, has seen that misunderstanding at work from both sides. Esinga , who grew up in comfortable circumstances in the Midwest, had been married nine years and had two daughters when domestic violence Lore her world apart. "We had it all," she says. "A house, two cars, a dog, a picket fence. l mean, we had it all. But peo– ple don't know what goes on behind the walls of the white house with the picket fence." After a stretch in a women's shelter, Esinga gratefully moved to Columbia Villa in 1998. "lL was," she says, "a godsend." When HAP initiated the HOPE Vl project, Esinga came on board as a res– ident and community liaison, a job that required her to attend endless meetings of HAP, city, and public agency officials. Some of the off-the– cuff remarks she heard stung. "You're talking about me," she would say. "The people who live in public housing-that's who l am. l had to give that a voice. Their mouths would literally drop. People here are no differem than anywhere. We cry the same tears. We have the same fears. lL's a human element. " U n the two years since demolition began, New Columbia, as the project is now called , has spromed new homes along orderly streets. Sturdy play sets sprang up in a scatter– ing of pocket parks. A "main street" with a community center, new elemen– tary school, and local businesses is planned. In spring 2005, the first families began returning. HAP will learn these residents' opinions when Gibson's final survey is completed sometime after the last housing unit is occupied in late 2006. But HAP knows that some for– mer residents will not return, and Gibson will survey them as well. Sarah Hobbs is one of those not returning. Hobbs raised two children