Category: Residents

Distrust me just this once? Part 3, how to build trust

10 September, 2009 (10:15) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]
  
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
– Oscar Wilde
 
In the first two parts of this post, we encountered (via a Los Angeles Times article) Los Angeles‘ Jordan Downs public housing property, and the ambitious (if sketchy and idealistic) plans for its [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 2, the enemies of trust

9 September, 2009 (10:43) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].
 
 
“Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?”
– Groucho Marx, Duck Soup
 
To redevelop Jordan Downs, one of Los Angeles’s largest and worst public housing properties, requires gargantuan capital – the figure $1,000,000,000 has been bandied about – and that, in turn, requires massive political capital, [...]

Distrust me just this once? Part 1, the need for trust

8 September, 2009 (09:50) | Communications, HOPE VI, Los Angeles, Public housing, Residents, Speculation | No comments

“Trust me just this once.”
– from Great Lies in Real Estate, Volume 3
 

“Trust me, I’m on your side”
 
Slums persist in part because they have defenders.  Among those defenders are many slum residents themselves, for whom a lifetime’s experience has taught them, Trust no one, especially any well-dressed or well-spoken newcomer who claims, “I’m from the [...]