RIP the New Haven / Hamden "Berlin Wall!" According to New Haven Independent, the 12' tall fence, which Hamden erected five decades ago in response to complaints about crimes committed by people living just over the city / suburb line, will be torn down, thanks in large part to a federal civil-rights investigation and the ensuing threat of a federal lawsuit.
Curious about the history of the wall? There's an interesting piece about it in The New Journal that underlines what a rotten thing this wall is: "Over 3,500 feet long, it assures that the one road into the projects is also the only way out. Residents hoping to buy groceries at a Hamden shopping center three miles away have to travel into New Haven to get around the fence, a 7.7-mile trip that takes two buses and up to two hours to complete. In the case of a flood or fire, emergency vehicles have to travel around the fence to help residents in the projects."
Needless to say, the decision to remove it was controversial: take a look at this New Haven Independent article from August 2012 about a "raucous" meeting of Hamdenites.
This is one of two fences we know of that suburbanites built at the city / suburb line to keep city-dwellers out of the suburbs (the other one was built around Baltimore's Hollander Ridge, which we have written about here previously). Does anyone know of any others?
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Showing posts sorted by date for query hollander. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Sunday, August 8, 2010
SITE SELECTION
Hollander Ridge's PERIMETER FENCE--which I wrote about in the previous post--is only one chapter in the former housing project's amazing story. Another crucial chapter has to do with its SITE SELECTION. What you first notice about the site is that it is totally separated from its surroundings. Here's how a HUD consultant described it in 1996: “Hollander Ridge is located on the far northeast edge of the City of Baltimore on a parcel of land bounded by expressways on two sides and a major arterial road (Route 40) to the south. . . .The property is approximately four miles from downtown Baltimore, but effectively cut off from the rest of the city by Interstate 95.
Take a look at a Google aerial of the site:
Hollander Ridge's isolation isn't (or wasn't) coincidental. On the contrary, it was the result of a compromise of sorts. In the 1970s, HABC was under pressure to site public housing in "non-impacted" areas: areas that weren't overwhelmingly African-American and poor. In fact HUD decided that it would not grant approval for new public housing units in impacted areas unless those units were balanced by units in
white neighborhoods. A HABC official put it this way: "As our urban renewal effort is presently devoted almost exclusively to inner city areas where our city’s worst housing is located, and as we try to provide housing for the same economic group which is being displaced . . ., there is a great need for new public housing units in these areas. Because of the HUD’s requirement, it was necessary . . . to find a site in a White neighborhood for a large number of units to balance the significant amount of housing to be built on urban renewal lots."
Hollander Ridge, which is in a white census tract in a non-impacted area, was conceived of from the start as a development of "balance units" that would win HABC favor with HUD. But again, a compromise was made. Here's the HUD consultant again: "Although technically a non-impacted site, it is an extremely isolated location that is inconvenient to schools, churches, shopping, laundry facilities, or other services, especially for those without cars. Vehicular access to the site is provided by a guarded checkpoint on the north side of Pulaski Highway (Route 40). Originally, the property was also accessible through residential streets that served the Rosedale community to the northeast. However, because of crime problems over the years, these access points have been blocked by barricades."
I don't want to come down too hard on HABC here, for whom siting public housing in non-impacted, white areas was virtually impossible, and who had to make the sorts of compromises alluded to above. Clearly, the real enemy here is home-rule, which gives racists the ability to exclude in the first place. Still, Hollander Ridge was a terrible, terrible place to site public housing, a fact perhaps best evidenced by the fact that it was imploded at the ripe old age of 24.
Take a look at a Google aerial of the site:
Hollander Ridge's isolation isn't (or wasn't) coincidental. On the contrary, it was the result of a compromise of sorts. In the 1970s, HABC was under pressure to site public housing in "non-impacted" areas: areas that weren't overwhelmingly African-American and poor. In fact HUD decided that it would not grant approval for new public housing units in impacted areas unless those units were balanced by units in
white neighborhoods. A HABC official put it this way: "As our urban renewal effort is presently devoted almost exclusively to inner city areas where our city’s worst housing is located, and as we try to provide housing for the same economic group which is being displaced . . ., there is a great need for new public housing units in these areas. Because of the HUD’s requirement, it was necessary . . . to find a site in a White neighborhood for a large number of units to balance the significant amount of housing to be built on urban renewal lots."
Hollander Ridge, which is in a white census tract in a non-impacted area, was conceived of from the start as a development of "balance units" that would win HABC favor with HUD. But again, a compromise was made. Here's the HUD consultant again: "Although technically a non-impacted site, it is an extremely isolated location that is inconvenient to schools, churches, shopping, laundry facilities, or other services, especially for those without cars. Vehicular access to the site is provided by a guarded checkpoint on the north side of Pulaski Highway (Route 40). Originally, the property was also accessible through residential streets that served the Rosedale community to the northeast. However, because of crime problems over the years, these access points have been blocked by barricades."
I don't want to come down too hard on HABC here, for whom siting public housing in non-impacted, white areas was virtually impossible, and who had to make the sorts of compromises alluded to above. Clearly, the real enemy here is home-rule, which gives racists the ability to exclude in the first place. Still, Hollander Ridge was a terrible, terrible place to site public housing, a fact perhaps best evidenced by the fact that it was imploded at the ripe old age of 24.
PERIMETER FENCE
Today, I rode my bike to Hollander Ridge, or anyway what used to be Hollander Ridge (it was demolished on July 9, 2000). Hollander Ridge was a 1,000-unit public housing development built in 1976 by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City on a 60-acre parcel at the city / county line. Hollander Ridge was virtually 100% African-American when it was demolished.
I biked to Hollander Ridge to see this wrought iron perimeter fence:
I learned about this fence while reading Judge Marvin Garvis’s Thompson v. HUD decision, which devotes 12 pages (out of 322) to its remarkable story.
In 1998, HABC, with the approval and financial support of HUD, Senator Barbara M ccluskey, then Mayor Kurt Schmoke, the Rosedale Community, and a few Hollander Ridge residents constructed the 8-foot tall, spiked, wrought iron fence around the perimeter of Hollander Ridge to separate it from the adjacent, predominantly white suburban community of Rosedale. The result was something very strange and perhaps unprecedented: a gated community created by outsiders to keep insiders in (well, I suppose a prison is a precedent for this).
The fence is the product of a HUD pilot project to seek solutions for crime in HUD-supported public housing. HUD, with feedback from HABC, selected Hollander Ridge as the focus of the pilot, and the Department of the Treasury deployed a Secret Service team to study the site and make suggestions for improving public safety. By that time, crime was rampant at Hollander Ridge. Garvis describes "check days" (days when elderly residents would receive their monthly social security checks), when “the high-rise area was, in effect, an open air drug and sex market.” The Secret Service Team’s report, entitled “Operation Safe Home," confirmed the existence of serious public safety problems at Hollander Ridge, and recommended, among other things, that “A fence perimeter [be established] around the community limiting pedestrian access.” It was built in 1998.
But the fence—which cost as much as $1.7 million according to a Baltimore Sun article—wouldn’t have been built had the white Rosedale residents not organized and complained that the city-county line was too porous, and that the crime from Hollander Ridge was lowering Rosedale property values, and making Rosedale less safe. As Garvis notes, while some were motivated by legitimate concerns (in 1996 an elderly Rosedale woman was slain in her home), “certainly, some of these Baltimore
County residents were motivated by racial animus directed against the African-American residents of Hollander Ridge."
And how. Thinking about it, I'm reminded of John Carpenter's 1981 anti-urban classic Escape from New York, which posits New York City as giant, maximum-security prison, complete with fortified bridges and tunnels to keep the riff-raff out of the suburbs on the other side. (Remember the scene when The Duke, played by Isaac Hayes, gets sprayed with bullets trying to climb the border wall?) It also makes me think of Kenneth Jackson's essay “Gentleman’s Agreement,” where Jackson writes that although they are not physical boundaries, “the boundaries between our cities and our suburbs are as real and effective as both the fortifications of medieval Europe or the gated communities of our own time.” This 8-foot tall, spiked, $1.7 million wrought-iron perimeter fence built along Baltimore’s city-county line is a surreal landmark that--like Detroit's infamous HOLC wall--speaks volumes about race relations in metropolitan America.
I biked to Hollander Ridge to see this wrought iron perimeter fence:
I learned about this fence while reading Judge Marvin Garvis’s Thompson v. HUD decision, which devotes 12 pages (out of 322) to its remarkable story.
In 1998, HABC, with the approval and financial support of HUD, Senator Barbara M ccluskey, then Mayor Kurt Schmoke, the Rosedale Community, and a few Hollander Ridge residents constructed the 8-foot tall, spiked, wrought iron fence around the perimeter of Hollander Ridge to separate it from the adjacent, predominantly white suburban community of Rosedale. The result was something very strange and perhaps unprecedented: a gated community created by outsiders to keep insiders in (well, I suppose a prison is a precedent for this).
The fence is the product of a HUD pilot project to seek solutions for crime in HUD-supported public housing. HUD, with feedback from HABC, selected Hollander Ridge as the focus of the pilot, and the Department of the Treasury deployed a Secret Service team to study the site and make suggestions for improving public safety. By that time, crime was rampant at Hollander Ridge. Garvis describes "check days" (days when elderly residents would receive their monthly social security checks), when “the high-rise area was, in effect, an open air drug and sex market.” The Secret Service Team’s report, entitled “Operation Safe Home," confirmed the existence of serious public safety problems at Hollander Ridge, and recommended, among other things, that “A fence perimeter [be established] around the community limiting pedestrian access.” It was built in 1998.
But the fence—which cost as much as $1.7 million according to a Baltimore Sun article—wouldn’t have been built had the white Rosedale residents not organized and complained that the city-county line was too porous, and that the crime from Hollander Ridge was lowering Rosedale property values, and making Rosedale less safe. As Garvis notes, while some were motivated by legitimate concerns (in 1996 an elderly Rosedale woman was slain in her home), “certainly, some of these Baltimore
County residents were motivated by racial animus directed against the African-American residents of Hollander Ridge."
And how. Thinking about it, I'm reminded of John Carpenter's 1981 anti-urban classic Escape from New York, which posits New York City as giant, maximum-security prison, complete with fortified bridges and tunnels to keep the riff-raff out of the suburbs on the other side. (Remember the scene when The Duke, played by Isaac Hayes, gets sprayed with bullets trying to climb the border wall?) It also makes me think of Kenneth Jackson's essay “Gentleman’s Agreement,” where Jackson writes that although they are not physical boundaries, “the boundaries between our cities and our suburbs are as real and effective as both the fortifications of medieval Europe or the gated communities of our own time.” This 8-foot tall, spiked, $1.7 million wrought-iron perimeter fence built along Baltimore’s city-county line is a surreal landmark that--like Detroit's infamous HOLC wall--speaks volumes about race relations in metropolitan America.
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