A Depleted Legacy
November 19, 1995

by Curtis Lang		print version
		print version (graphics)

This article first appeared in Cite Magazine, a publication of the Rice University Design Alliance, in 1995. The Rice Design Alliance (RDA), established in 1973, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of architecture, urban design, and the built environment in the Houston region.

This past year, Allen Parkway Village has been in the news once again, for what may prove to be the last time. Over the past dozen years, the 50-year old public housing complex, Houston's largest, has become a familiar fixture in local newspapers. Through a series of efforts at demolition and redevelopment occurring under four mayors, Allen Parkway Village has generated seemingly unending lawsuits, public meetings, congressional hearings, even its own HUD amendment. It has attracted a large, diverse coalition of project residents, community ctivists from both the left and the right, academics, writers, documentary film makers, historians, preservationists, and religious and civic leaders. Allen Parkway Village has become such a cause c‚lŠbre -- even if the cause is lost -- because it embodies virtually all the problems at the Housing Authority of the City of Houston HACH) since the agency's first major scandal in 1953.
HACH's mission is to provide low-income housing for the poorest of Houston's poor. A discrepancy exists between this legislated raison d'ˆtre and what HACH actually achieves. For the past 25 years and more, HACH has often been more successful in feeding tax dollars to developers and builders than in doing its mandated job.