What The Future Holds

As with some Hope VI projects, it still isn't clear that most of the displaced public housing residents, like the hundreds that used to live in what was Metropolitan Gardens , will benefit directly from the project created, presumably, to improve their lives.

Louise Shufford, tenant council president of the former Metropolitan Gardens , calls the new development holy ground. That's because she and other public housing residents living on the last block of their former community are tenaciously determined to move to Park Place , despite attempts to scare some of them off.

"There are some people involved in this development . . . who had gotten a lot of people to move off this site, even before the development started, with misinformation," she says, declining to be more specific.

She recounts several incidents: at one time before the new construction, she says someone cut the gas lines under the old buildings, putting remaining residents in harms way; some residents left after men who seemed to work for the Housing Authority told some it would be best for them to leave. They left even after Ruggs himself called to assure them this was not the case.

"Before I moved over here (in December), there were still people going around to different units telling people they weren't going to come over to this side. But I said, 'Don't move. All of us are going to stay here together. We're going to stand our ground.'"

She says she wants to keep the resident team that kept residents abreast of their rights in the new development "because I want somebody who is concerned about the residents and not the dollar."

She said public housing residents, especially those residents still living on the last undeveloped block, were supposed to be the first to return to Park Place , "but it hasn't worked that way and I want to know why."

Still, Shufford remains positive about the eventual outcome. As long as residents pass criminal background checks and other screenings by the new property managers, they should be able to return. She looks forward to the day when the old public housing residents return to live with new ones in Park Place .

"If things start out right, then they'll end right," she says.