Below are images of the playground on the Potomac Gardens public housing complex as it was when Grassroots DC was founded and moved onto the property back in 2013. Broken down and missing safety rails, is the playground at Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex safe? How do public housing communities fix these issues?
playground
The state of the playground was a topic of discussion in our basic computer class and a cause for concern in resident council meetings. Little Lights Urban Ministries, another nonprofit located in Potomac Gardens, who offers tutoring and a summer program for kids from pre-k to the 8th grade, also had concerns. The basketball court was another issue. Potomac Gardens’ resident Carlton Moxley sometimes laid out his own cash to replace the backboards.
One might assume that the playground of a public housing complex would be paid for and maintained by the government, but public housing is a complicated business. Most of us don’t even know who owns public housing. Is it the city? Is it the federal government? Below are some answers.
While the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) oversees the public housing program, it is administered locally by about 3,100 public housing agencies across the United States. The local public housing agency that administers Potomac Gardens and indeed all of D.C.’s public housing complexes is the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA). Most public housing agencies own and manage their public housing developments themselves, but some contract with private management companies. DCHA does not manage Potomac Gardens itself; management of the property has been contracted out to CT Management.
All of this information, still leaves unanswered the question, where do the funds for the replacement of playgrounds in public housing developments like Potomac Gardens come from? The federal government funds public housing through two main streams: (1) the Public Housing Operating Fund, which is intended to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the developments’ operating costs (such as maintenance and security); and (2) the Public Housing Capital Fund, which funds renovation of developments and replacement of items such as appliances and heating and cooling equipment.
The purchase and installation of a new playground can easily cost more than $100,000. According to the US Department of Housing Operating Fund Budget for 2016 the D.C. Housing Authority will receive about $6,164 per unit to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the development’s actual operating cost. HUD’s Annual Budget does not explicitly state that District gets $6,164 per unit from the Operating Fund. The total budget for the Public Housing Operating Fund in 2015 was $4.44 billion. The share that goes to the District of Columbia Housing Authority is 1.1 percent or $48.84 million. The District of Columbia Housing Authority manages 7,924 units. Divide the $48.84 million by 7,924 units and you get $6,164 per unit. Of course, DCHA doesn’t spend $6,164 on each unit. Most of the money goes to salaries and other overhead costs. But this figure gives us an idea what kind of money DCHA has to work with to meet the maintenance and operating needs of the District’s public housing. In any case, we can’t expect DCHA to allocate $100,000 from the Operating Fund to pay for a single playground in one housing complex.
It might be more logical for the money to come from the Public Housing Capital Fund. In fact, DCHA received $27 million from the Capital Fund in 2014 and an additional $34.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, the Captial Fund grants were probably used for renovations and replacements needed in a single, housing complex or for specific projects like lead abatement, renovations needed to bring DCHA properties up to accessibility standards or environmental sustainability initiatives. Most of the Recovery Act funding will go to enhance housing projects that have or will become mixed-income developments like the townhouses at Cappers Carrollsburg. Getting money from the Capital Fund or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to replace a single playground in a 100 percent low-income housing development is highly unlikely.
So, what then? Clearly, the playground in the images above needs to be replaced or torn down all together. If the community within the Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex can’t expect help for a project like this from the District of Columbia Housing Authority, what do they do? That question will be answered in the next post…
Sorry, but the people in Public Housing destroy their own section. They destroy their homes, community, playgrounds, schools, stores, and anything else that surround them. If by now people haven’t realized that they need jobs, stop having babies they can not afford, and live within their means because the city is moving in a different direction then they will just be left behind.
Stop tearing up where you live as if someone is suppose to give a F**K about you. It is not tax payers responsibility to take care of trifling people.
Hello JoAnne,
You make a lot of unsubstantiated claims in your comment. It may seem obvious to you that “people in Public Housing destroy their own section. They destroy their homes, community, playgrounds, schools, stores, and anything else that surround them,” but it’s certainly not obvious to me, and I work in public housing. I suspect that it’s not obvious to a lot of the readers on this site so, I’d really, truly appreciate it if you could back those claims up with some solid evidence.
In other words, give us the name of someone who lives in public housing (a first name will do) and describe explicitly what that person destroyed and how. Presumably, you know at least one public housing resident who has destroyed their home, their community, their playground, their school and a store in their neighborhood, otherwise you wouldn’t have made the claim, right? I’m not saying this has to be the same person, in fact it’s highly unlikely that one person would be responsible for all of that destruction. So, to show us that you know what you’re talking about, name these people and how they destroyed these things.
I can say of myself, that I don’t always keep my apartment as clean as I’d like or as clean as I probably should, but I wouldn’t say I’ve destroyed it. What does a destroyed public housing apartment look like? What does a destroyed school look like and how do individuals (in this case public housing residents) accomplish the destruction of a school?
I know schools that have been demolished, and in that case I’d say they were destroyed, but the only people that I know who have demolished schools are the contractors that work for the city government. I saw what they did to Bruce Monroe Elementary School for instance. That school was destroyed, but not by public housing residents, it was destroyed by DC government in conjunction with DCPS.
I know what a playground looks like that’s been neglected and not maintained. I put pictures of one such playground on the above blog post. But I can’t say that it was public housing residents who destroyed the playground. I don’t believe the residents of Potomac Gardens came out with sledge hammers and destroyed their playground. I think they used the playground and it got old and fell apart, as playgrounds do. That’s what I call neglect and lack of maintenance.
I do agree with your statement that, “the city is moving in a different direction then they will just be left behind.” Potomac Gardens residents know this as well. I know very few who don’t work at all, but I know very many who don’t have the job skills to make the money they’d like to be making. A lot of Potomac Gardens residents are trying to address this, which is why many folks stay in public housing for less than five years. You move in when times are tough and you move out when things get better. It’s not really enough time to destroy the place, but if you have evidence to the contrary I’d like to hear it.
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