News release from Mayor’s Office:
Mayor Ganim joined mayors from across the country in Washington D.C. at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting to discuss issues that affect cities in our nation including smart gun technology, reentry affairs, immigration, substance abuse, and housing.
On January 22, Mayor Ganim met with officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to ensure progress with Bridgeport’s public housing complexes such as Greene Homes, Marina Village, and Trumbull Gardens. Specific attention was paid to the commitment to decommission the Greene Homes to provide quality of life and safety improvements for its residents.
Mayor Ganim stated, “The Housing authority is finally having an emergency meeting to submit the application to decommission the Greene homes. That will allow the process to quickly move and the housing authority will relocate Greene home residents into better locations.”
Park City Communities, formerly known as Bridgeport Housing Authority, will initiate the following multi-step process in order to expedite decommissioning of Greene Homes:
1. The BHA Board needs vote to approve submission of the Section 18 Application to HUD for the required a Completeness Review.
2. Upon completion of this review the Section 18 Application is forwarded to the Special Application Center (SAC) in Chicago.
3. The Special Applications Center will conduct a thorough review of the entire application and eventually decide if the decommissioning and subsequent redevelopment of the Greene Homes site with either public or mixed-income housing is the best strategy for improving this area of the City and provide quality housing for our residents.In a press conference hosted on January 28th to address violence in the city, Bridgeport Housing Authority Commissioner Steve Nelson stated the following, “The Housing Authority is ready and willing to sit down with the City, police department and all agencies to bring peace and prosperity to the city’s public housing. We want to bring in whatever resources necessary to keep the developments safe and provide quality housing for the residents. Housing Authority Commissioners are planning to have an emergency board meeting to develop the best strategy for improving conditions and come up with an effective plan.”
The last shooting at the Greene Homes will not be the last and trying to close it will not happen in the near future if at all.
HUD should find the funds to hire a dedicated compliment of Officers to patrol all the housing projects on all shifts. Overtime is not sustainable nor is it cost effective.
Stringfellow
I believe HUD has been consistent in saying that policing the public housing complexes is the responsibility of the local police or private security paid with HUD funds.
They will not make an exception for Bridgeport. I am sure they would consider a pilot program if it is truly different and promising but just to do so because Bridgeport wants HUD to do so isn’t going to cut it.
Well Mr. Walsh the current police department does not have the manpower to effectively patrol any of the public housing areas? Adding extra cars or foot patrols is not sustainable especially if there is overtime involved.
The mayor needs to find the funds to pay for full time Officers. Trying to close one down is going to take a long time if ever, what happens in the meantime? He needs to consult with the department to see how many Officers are going to be needed per shift. This way there is an idea what it is going to cost. If he could work out a deal with HUD and the city it might work.
I believe that mixed-income housing across the city to replace the projects is the right step. This reminds me of what they are doing in Norwalk. We have to stop the violence! History teaches us that they put us in the projects because the police would know exactly where we were located whenever they wanted to raid our community. You see similar situations in pretty much every large city (chicago, philly, new york,) This is a problem that our oppressors created now it is up to them to figure this out. But we are not sitting around waiting either. This right here is good though. Go Joe.
Some of the housing projects that I am familiar with, Southfield village in Stamford For example, were inhabited by military families of service people coming back from conflicts. This was before these areas may have been called ghettos. They were high-rises and what were called bungalows, the one story dwellings. Back in those times they were kept clean and people even grew vegetables in the garden in front of the bungalows. The husbands went out to work and the wives took care of the kids And the household. I am fairly certain that there was not a lot of crime in these lower income domiciles. When I was a uniform cop my post were the projects. There were a lot of good people living there. There were a lot of bad people living there. I considered it my job to protect the good people. Many times I heard from those who considered themselves downtrodden that they lived under the conditions in those projects because that was what the government “gave them.” They never seemed to understand when I explained to them that lower income people had lived there before them but that they worked hard and kept their neighborhood clean and did not commit crime. Those people, I imagine, did not complain about being downtrodden. They worked hard and moved on in their lives. Today we have a totally different set of circumstances. Gangs rule, family structures are broken, and violence is rampant. Making comments about reasons for all the bad things that are occurring in these neighborhoods cause some to call others racists. Unfortunately some of the comments regarding the reasons for what happens in these projects are factual. Fractured Families I believe are the major reason for the problems of the day. Until those people that are affected realize that they have to make a change in the direction of their lives nothing will get better for them. In my estimation there is no substitute for hard work and getting an education to make a better life for yourself. Just an opinion.
2020 started in Bridgeport with a City website listing of Boards and Commissions that was not comprehensive, showed groups that were understaffed and of perhaps most significance, listed at least two groups, Fair Housing and Fair Rent which had received no lasting nominations since the last terms expired in 2007.
Housing Court refers folks to local commissions like this, but when they have “died” as functioning entities to citizens in need and citizens willing to share governance duties, we all lose. Perhaps Mayor Ganim was housed in a public institution that never had a Fair ‘behind bars’ Board? But from his legal education, and previous municipal administration in our City, did he care about people who ran into problems. Where do tenants of Marina, Panik and Evergreen among others go to live when buildings are approved for demolition??
The staffing of the Police Department and organization of assignments is a recurring issue. Perhaps the Public Safety Committee can dig into the facts, get regular numbers to expose the most vulnerable safety issues and the work assignments that are sucking up dollars today and into the future beyond common sense proportion? Time will tell.
I agree with you. I don’t understand why so many are against eliminating them knowing that they don’t work anymore and barely ever did……….
I was agreeing with Steph. Tear them down…I know , you have to find somewhere for all the people to go to. Everyone that lived in Father Panic,Marina and the Pequonics did.
We do need to tear them down. People will find housing elsewhere. We have to break up it up. This is a good start.
Who are the oppressors? Are they the same people who oppressed the previous tenants of these projects that I speak of in the below comments? If these oppressors are still around we need to find them and throw them in jail. I don’t believe that projects were built to house minorities I believe they were built for housing for people who needed a helping hand and as I state below the initial occupants of those projects were probably all some sort of minority’s including European imports and our military coming back from conflicts as I have also stated below. I was brought up in East Harlem on 116th st and then on 167th st off the Grand Concourse in the south Bronx. My dad worked hard and we were able to move to a better neighborhood in the north west Bronx. I don’t recall my father speaking about any oppressors for reasons that we lived in a ghetto neighborhood. Oh wait! Now I remember. He did speak about the oppressors. Silly me! Now I recall that he frequently spoke about the oppressors. When he was 18 years old the oppressors came and killed his father and sent his mother and himself to separate labor camps in the Gulag. He never saw her again. Thankfully he had what it took to escape and then go fight in the war. If you’re interested in history there is a movie called “The Way Back” Starring Ed Harris who is presently on Broadway playing in to “To Kill A Mockingbird.” He is very good in both of those parts. My dad described many many times how he and his friends escaped and walked all the way to Afghanistan and then down to India where they found transport to England. That movie was made about people like them and what they endured. Once in Britain they became members of squadron 303 in the Royal Air Force. There is a recent movie entitled “Mission of Honor” And it is about squadron 303. After the war these men scattered all over the world as they could not go back to their countries as “the oppressors” had control of their country. They came here with NOTHING. Hard work made ALL of them successful.
As you can tell, I’ve just about had it with this shit. Blah blah blah. Poor me. Etc etc etc.
What I wrote below was earlier and I must have missed that line about the oppressors. Can’t people just stop with the excuses….. if they don’t then they do not have what it takes to become anything more than they are and their situation will always stay the same.
The previous comments that I said were below ended up above instead.
Buildings don’t kill people, people kill people. We need to stop with the bandaid solutions and I’ll disguised gentrification schemes. We need to fund education which is the foundation for everything that follows. Can you imagine what Bridgeport would look like today if the LOCAL Budget (Bridgeport) contributes as much as Waterbury did?
Can you imagine a city that finds schools well enough for wrap around social and emotional services, as well as being able to afford to pay enough to attract top talent to educate our children for future careers? I can but it will take work. It will take voters to understand that while Bridgeport schools spend less per pupil than the surrounding areas, that the fault does not lie mostly with the state. It lies mostly with us. You see all those other localities, with the exception of Hartford, receive less tax dollars from the state per pupil. The difference is that the surrounding towns make up for the deficit with LOCAL tax dollars. And before they use the “tax poor “argument look at Waterbury again which has a lower per capita income than Bridgeport.
Wake up Bridgeport and help solve this problem, bandaids wont work. Our city is hemorrhaging.
With Ganim he starts crusades then forms i
Them into a rackets.
“This is a problem that our oppressors created now it is up to them to figure this out”.
Incredible.
BINGO!!!!!!
In order to fix a problem one must realize that there’s a problem then gather the facts to start but here we have City elected officials doing a dog and pony show with solutions, first a warm over curfew because of the shooting at the court house by young men in their 20’s and early in the afternoon, what the hell would a curfew do to prevent that shooting. We have police department that is not trusted in dealing with young black and brown teenagers, remember the police shooting and killing a teenage boy by Walgreens and how the whole incident got worse with the police and all of the delays with the investigation and now you want to stop these same teenagers and asked why that are doing?