Tuesday, May 17, 2005

THE "NEW COMMUNITIES" program of Mayor Anthony A. Williams that the D.C. Council approved last week is the kind of idea that looks fine on paper. It would target the District's poorest neighborhoods with an infusion of nearly $200 million to transform blocks of concentrated poverty into thriving and attractive communities with plenty of affordable housing for working-class families as well as middle- and upper-income homes. There's nothing wrong with that picture, if the New Communities project does, in fact, lift the prospects of current residents along with the condition of their homes. Giving the District's poorest residents a chance to share in the city's economic resurgence is commendable and necessary. The task now is to pull it off.

Some residents and community leaders in the nine targeted neighborhoods fear, however, that they will be supplanted by a sparkling new physical environment offering better retail outlets and, most of all, wealthier residents. Those fears are not unfounded. The story of "urban renewal" uprooting and sweeping thousands of people out of their homes in the District in the 1950s and '60s is not a myth. It is a reality the mayor must avoid repeating if New Communities is to become a demonstration of his commitment to building and retaining healthy mixed-income neighborhoods.

The first New Communities installment of about $60 million was approved by the D.C. Council last week. City Administrator Robert C. Bobb, tapped by the mayor to spearhead the project, hopes to use the money to replace and rebuild low-income units and -- working in concert with community leaders, property owners and developers -- to improve schools and attack other local social problems. "The focus is on housing, but the broader focus is on building human capital," he told The Post.

This is an undertaking that requires enormous endurance. To be successful, the city will have to enlist a long-term commitment from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its Section 8 program; property owners will have to agree to renovate and rebuild; and developers must buy into the city's plans. That won't be easy. Moreover, when problems emerge, as they will, there will be a temptation to discard the ambitious and innovative project and instead pursue the easier goal of demolishing the neighborhoods and replacing them with more lucrative development. That would be exactly the kind of disastrous outcome that residents and community leaders have reason to fear and that Mr. Williams must avoid with every means at his disposal. Otherwise, New Communities will become a replica of an old disaster.