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?The left-leaning quarterly Jacobin takes a deep dive into the history of public housing and the impact of the Atlanta model on the rest of the nation in an article titled "Tricknology 101." Jacobin published the article in its October print issue. It's been behind an online paywall until recently. 
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?Writer Maya Dukmasova spent months in research and came to Atlanta to interview former Bowen Homes resident and president of the neighborhood association, Shirley Hightower, who also spoke to Creative Loafing for last year's "Straight Outta Stankonia" story. "They had a lot of tricknology, AHA did," Hightower tells Dukmasova, regarding the Atlanta Housing Authority and then-president Renee Glover's successful efforts to replace public housing with mixed-income developments. Hightower remains a vocal opponent of AHA and Glover's tactics.  "One minute it was one thing, next minute it was another," she says.
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?The article attempts to expose the shaky foundation upon which the Atlanta model was constructed. It also offers examples of the tactics AHA utilized in an attempt to manipulate residents and prove public housing's ineffectiveness:
??? They distributed questionnaires that read: As a resident in an Atlanta Housing Authority community, I wish to share my opinion regarding AHA’s plans to demolish our community. There were three yes-or-no questions to answer: I want to move; I want a Housing Choice Voucher; I support AHA’s Quality of Life Initiative. The authority reported that 96 percent of residents saw the demolition of their homes as an opportunity.
??Dukmasova also claims the theory that concentrated poverty caused the failure of public housing was one manufactured by neoliberal economic policies to drove the shift from projects to private development. It basically amounted to a land grab, she argues:
??? The notion that poor black neighborhoods are inherently bad for the people living in them has played into the hands of those who wish to seize the land on which these neighborhoods stand. Apparently independent and apolitical research findings by organizations like the Urban Institute point to persistent, intergenerational social and psychological problems in such neighborhoods. These findings in turn support the claims that eliminating enclaves of housing for the very poor would benefit the residents of those enclaves, regardless of where they end up.
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? As for the land, whatever isn’t immediately useful to private interests ends up being cleared. Better some pretty green grass than a ghetto. Nowhere has this pattern been more clearly observable than in public housing neighborhoods.??The article goes on to offer an alternative to the Atlanta model, which has been almost universally hailed and copied throughout the country over the past two decades. Dukmasova points to the New York City Housing Authority as an example of a well-managed public housing system in a major city that bucks the trend.
??? And yet, NYCHA is hardly studied. There is no talk of the “New York model” in policy circles or among politicians. And why would there be? New York’s narrative is blatantly contradictory to the story of public housing that failed. That failure is a foundation myth for the neoliberalizing American metropolis.
? ??Worth a full read at Jacobin.