New Haven Independent

Posted by: preston maynard | May 10, 2006 4:33 PM

I have driven by the new housing at Q Terrace and what a dramatic change! I like the big, bold architectural forms; the bright colors and the up-story porches where residents can get a dramatic view of the river. This is the best designed public housing in a long time! Kudos to the Housing Authority and this new developer, Trinity Financial.

Posted by: charlie | May 10, 2006 6:11 PM

This is great. Hopefully the new residents and meeting centers will help the area maintain a strong sense of community, keeping the area safe with block watches and (combined with the fabulous brand-new Clinton school next door) a good area to live and raise kids.

Does anyone know what the new "tenant mix" will be? A mix of owner occupied, market rate rentals and subsidized units for former Q terrace residents, right?

I might also add that the nearby Riverside project (a much smaller project with only about 12 families, but equally run down) was replaced with similar type units last year.

Posted by: kathy h | May 11, 2006 10:54 AM

Ugly housing does not make despair: people do. I sincerely hope Quinnipiac Terrace experiences a turn-around with these pretty, new homes. But I suspect the key is not the housing stock at the start of the project, but rather the people who will live there.

A crucial difference between the old projects and this new one is that the tenants will be a mix of owners and renters, very poor and lower middle class residents, working people and those on public assistance. A uniformly poor, largely unemployed, and mostly desperate population fills traditional public housing projects. That concentration of people doesn't usually possess the resources to help one another find work, opportunities for their children, or a political voice. Drug dealers and criminals take over the projects, terrorizing the law-abiding and decent who then turn inward to protect themselves from their "neighbors".

So let's stop demonizing the old buildings of the Quinnipiac Terrace project and concentrate on providing services and encouraging initiative among dispersed poor people. One way to do this would be to require landlords to accept one section 8 apartment for every ten apartments in a complex, but also to prohibit more than two such apartments per that same ten. Another way to do this would be to require on-going job training or education for all recipients of public assistance, except for the disabled. A third way would be to offer low interest micro-finacing loans to poor residents with business plans but no business capital to start up.

Posted by: Mark Maturo | May 11, 2006 4:25 PM

This is why my street is slowly getting better.

Posted by: Lou West | June 23, 2006 10:51 PM

There is flip side to the Q-Terrace development, which is realative to all of the New Haven Housing Authority rebuilding of it's old stock. Is there a "one for one" replacement for subsidized units and if not, what happens to those who will not return. Also, my research tells me that there is not one Black Developer in the rebuilding of the New Haven Housing Authority Stock, starting with the rebuilding of Elm Haven. Something wrong with that photo