GALVESTON, Texas — Critics of Galveston Housing Authority’s plan to rebuild public housing were noticeably absent from a public hearing Tuesday, the last of a series of four about the housing authority’s controversial redevelopment plan.
Among the six people who talked, four people, including Barbara Crews, head of Galveston County Restore and Rebuild, said they supported the housing authority’s plans to rebuild the 569 units of public housing that were occupied before Hurricane Ike struck Sept. 13, 2008, flooding four developments.
"The people who need that housing are people who run this town," resident Antoniette Burton said. "Not the power brokers, but the people who physically run it. The poor in Galveston need help. That’s all I can say about the issue. And if there was morality and ethics here, we would be helped."
Among the two people who criticized the housing authority’s plan, the biggest complaint centered around high-density housing. The housing authority has proposed rebuilding 440 public housing units in the same footprint occupied by the demolished housing developments and creating another 229 scattered-site houses throughout the island.
Housing developments segregate and stigmatize the poor, resident Joe Murphy said. He said the housing authority should focus more on scattered-site houses and sell the Magnolia Homes site at 1601 The Strand.
"You can stop the scourge of the stigmatization and the segregation of a low-income ghetto as you had before, or you can do scattered-site, mixed-income housing that pays property taxes," he said. "It seems like an easy choice to me, like an easy choice to you and it seems like an easy choice to your tenants."
While criticism of the housing authority’s redevelopment plan may have been missing from Tuesday’s meeting, critics said they are working hard to create an alternative plan that calls for disseminating public housing throughout Galveston County, not just the island.
David Stanowski, who has been opposed to rebuilding public housing, said he and members of his group no longer attend housing authority meetings because they are a "huge waste of our time."
Stanowski repeatedly has complained the housing authority’s policy to give people three minutes to share their opinions doesn’t give him enough time to make his case.
Instead, Stanowski and others have been working on their own redevelopment strategy, which they intend to present at a planning commission public hearing set tentatively for Dec. 15.
The housing authority board is expected to approve a redevelopment plan — likely on Dec. 11 — before turning it over to the planning commission, which must then make a recommendation to the city council for final approval.
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