BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

ii) Problems and Barriers
133. Descriptive evidence for reasons or problems that have led to the
postponement of implementation for more than eight years are rare or hard
to come by. However, through interviews, newspaper articles and later
reports several points seem to emerge:
The plan to integrate the schools within the housing project with
federal housing money was abandoned because a group in Baltimore
seeking the same goal met with failure.
The neighbourhood life center which operated in the community died
because the Johnson Wood Foundation decided not to continue its
funding. According to the neighbourhood people, criteria were applied
in the assessment stage which had not been part of the original
proposal (e.g. the question of numbers of people to be treated).
Changes in federal funding seem to have played a major role in the
delay - in the early 70's, the model cities program was changed into
the Community Development Program and funded through the city rather
than as a direct grant from the federal government.
In 1972-73, the Nixon moratorium on all federally funded units put an
end to the construction of housing units at the end of Phase I (274
units) - further plans for commercial and housing developments (Phase
II) and commercial and light industrial establishments (Phase III)
will now have to wait for new policies and funding opportunities.
In spite of the Greater Hartford Process, Councillor Jacquey Anderson
holds that the Board of Education operates almost in isolation.
Meetings with the City Council usually happen only at budget time. It
is her opinion that one cannot go to sleep on an issue but must push
continually to get it through the bureaucracy.
Somewhere in the process of planning the school, the white architect
who had worked with the community and planned the school described
above was replaced by a black architect. This obviously caused some
delay as new ideas and wishes to create a different design were brought
into the process.
A Human Services Component co-ordinating the whole array of about
20 social service agencies was implemented halfway and then abandoned;
not one of the four multi-service centers established in the city
(one of them in SAND) is left today;
Communication between the Chamber of Commerce and the community has
been cut.
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