Summary of Chaffee/HHA Meeting
Note: These are not actual quotes. They are my summaries of what I felt was communicated last night. You can read the Huntsville Times’ account here.
Chaffee Community Association: “NIMBY, but you should have at least told us about it!”
Michael Lundy, CEO of HHA: “I don’t like your questions, so I’m going to talk about something else. We’re talking about Huntsville; you can’t compare the negatives associated with similar situations in other cities. I’m not required to tell anybody anything. Any of you making $53,000 a year or less should apply for government housing assistance. Let’s compare the positives associated with similar situations in other cities.”
Mayor Tommy Battle: “You people are selfish, and you need to suck it up.”
Huntsville Police Department: “The Chaffee area is already more dangerous than the projects behind Huntsville Hospital.”
Huntsville City Councilwoman Sandra Moon: “How can an unelected council of five people have this much power? All five HHA board members should resign so that Mayor Battle can appoint folks that will work with the city.”
Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks: “This is an example of what happens when government gets out of control! We need to make governement work for us again! Congress is to blame!” (Note: Although he didn’t explicitly state it, it really sounded like Mo may be gearing up to run against Congressman Griffith in 2010.)
Charley Burruss, HHA Chairman: “Think of the children!”
One final note: we even got to hear the race card played last night. Mr. Lundy stated that “We don’t call them ‘projects’ anymore.” Commissioner Brooks replied, “I still call a project a project,” to which one of the audience members shouted, “Yeah, well I still call racism racism.” What the heck does government housing and being for or against it have to do with race?
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Nice summary, thanks for posting.
I got the impression that there was a group of HHA employees in the audience - among them one guy who yelled “that’s a lie” when the moderator told the story of the woman who was told she could stay at Stone Manor if she ’got pregnant’. Then the young lady rose to speak and tell her story and she had way more credibility than the mistrusted bureaucrats from HHA.
Very amusing cliff notes version of the meeting! Are you familiar with the concept called the “euphemism treadmill?” Words acquire “negative” connotations not because of the words themselves, but what they describe. You can call a project whatever you wish, but that doesn’t change what it is.
Lundy peed on our legs and told us it was raining
I can’t believe Tommy Battle said “You people are selfish, and you need to SUCK it up.” YOU PEOPLE? How Condescending! SUCK it up? If he thinks it’s not a big deal to have a project in SE/SW then why “Suck it up”? Because he knows it will be bad. And he was so rude to a woman at the meeting. I am done with Tommy Battle!
For the record, as the first sentence notes the “quotes” above are not exact, they are paraphrased versions of what was said. As far as I know Battle did not explicitly say to “suck it up.”
As stated in the first sentence (and reiterated by Brian), this is a tongue-in-cheek summary of the meeting. These are not actual quotes, but they are my perception of the meaning behind what was said.
Regardless what Tommy Battle said at the meeting - he wasn’t helpful or sympathetic to the south residents because I was there – I heard how little he said at the meeting. And, when he said anything at all – he was snobbish. I can’t believe someone from Birmingham would be a mayor of HSV. He is going to turn HSV into Birmingham and I don’t see anything good about it. I bet many of you who voted for him are sorry right now. I miss Loretta. She was a good mayor.
Gettingout: I agree that Battle didn’t come across well - and he didn’t even make a compelling case for the HHA plan - but Loretta deserves the blame for having appointed all five HHA board members and surely was in favor of the plan while in office.
I agree with you on Loretta if she appointed those clowns. Yes, she deserves some of the blame. I am now really sad and disappointed.
I was at the meeting - now I wish I had a camcorder to record the meeting. I would love to put the meeting on Youtube. I think I will start documenting this issue on my camcorder to the future. I will be fun or sad to see before and after.
This is capitalism at work. A private individual sold his property to HHA. HHA didn’t steal the property, they bought it from a willing and now enriched owner. Why aren’t you outraged at the person(s) who profitted by selling out to HHA. Simple fact, you can’t control who buys or moves into an apartment HHA or otherwise. That’s why zoning is important. If the apartment was sold to Donald Trump and he kicked everyone out, noone would have a problem with it.
First, the new residents are human beings created in God’s image. Second, if they bring poor test scores and crime with them, then why shouldn’t they be evenly distributed throughout the city instead of concentrated in one or two school districts? The best way to break the poverty welfare chain is give these impressionable young kids positive role models and peer pressure by decentralizing the public housing. So the HHA’s idea is sound.
From now on the HHA purchases should be limited to 30 units or less and no more projects transfers to Chaffee until they put some in the Jones Valley, Hampton Cove, Monte Sano, Mountain Gap and other school districts.
While I appreciate Battle honest responses, I understand the angst! I was educated in a school district with both some of Huntsville’s wealthest and poorest and know that your highly public reaction has negatively affected property values more than the HHA transfers.
Heffie, you are a classic example of the failed big government school system. Let me help you get the facts straight. First, all capitalism transactions are profit motivated by both sides - otherwise it is not capitalism. Please demonstrate to me the profit that will accrue to HHA in this transaction. The answer is none. If there was no profit then what is HHA’s motive. How about spending my tax dollars to provide freeloaders a place to live that is unquestionably better that the taxpayers who are footing the bill.
You are also forgetting the horrible experiment that this country endured for umpteen years by transporting kids in poverty all over town to sit beside a non-poverty kid (role model) in school, the Supreme looked at all the data and said it didn’t work and stopped the bussing. Please tell me what has changed that makes you believe it will work now. The motivation behind HHA is not about getting kids out of poverty, it is about deception, greed, and injustice.
DECEPTION: http://www.huntsvillehousing.org/cms/FAQs%2FMyths/62.html At the HHA web site, the management argues, “the largest subsidy for housing in the United States is the federal homeowner mortgage interest tax deduction ……. Homeownership, therefore, is not the embodiment of self-sufficiency and independence from public subsidy……”affordable housing” building can be offered at below-market rents or purchase prices is that the up-front acquisition and development costs of financing would be reduced by federal tax credits and grants. In other words, the day-to-day operating costs and the rental income would not be subsidized by the municipality.”
This is all gobbly-gook to try to persuade people to believe that homeowners are the freeloaders and not the welfare recipients. The truth is that homeowners pay a lowered income tax, but nevertheless, those same homeowners that do in fact pay taxes are paying for public housing, whose occupants pay no taxes at all. It is pure unadulterated deception to try to argue that these two cases are equal, or that homeowners are more of a culprit than freeloaders.
GREED: The operating budget for HHA includes $1.8 million for salaries. The HHA web site lists only 8 employees which means they make $225,000 each or some combination thereof, or we are back to deception again by the HHA as to how many employees they have.
INJUSTICE: The total operating budget of $10.8 million plus $1.9 million received as rent, minus the salaries, and $2.8 for maintenance and admin costs, leaves $8.1 for the voucher program. The projects are paid for and the new purchases come from the profits from selling some of the projects. There are 1,221 vouches being handed out at $6,634.00 each. Lots of hard working poor folks, who are paying for this through their taxes, pay less then this for their housing. Adding insult to injury, the much more luxurious opulence of the new Stone Manor housing, creates an out-and-out injustice. It is wrong by any moral code, (except maybe yours) for the residents of Stone Manor to pay for you to replace them in their home.
You are also forgetting that Battle is a real estate salesman. They are worse than car salesmen – a lot more money is at state. And, I assure you that in this case there is money on the table that you and I will never hear about. This guy was easy to spot from the get-go. I do not have a lot of sympathy for the folks on this thread who are displaying voters’ remorse. They unfortunately deserve what they get for voting for this guy.
Heffe, with regards to your comment “From now on the HHA purchases should be limited to 30 units or less and no more projects transfers to Chaffee until they put some in the Jones Valley, Hampton Cove, Monte Sano, Mountain Gap and other school districts”, is there some reason you’re suggesting the projects transfers be exclusive to those schools, there mostly in south Hunstville? How will the transfers impact the student load at Butler, will the elementary students at Chaffee actually attend Chaffee elementary school or will they be bussed to Farley? Are there no other properties or school districts available in Huntsville that the transfers can benefit from?