East Point city councilman defends yesterday’s Housing Authority event

It’s been called (by us) the Great East Point Housing Authority Apocalypse of 2010, the day (yesterday) when more than 30,000 people were made to wait in the August heat just to get their hands on crummy applications for Section 8 housing vouchers. Scratch that. To get their hands on crummy applications for a spot on the crummy waiting list for Section 8 housing vouchers. Oh, and, only 400 vouchers are available at any one time in East Point, and none are available currently.

CL wasn’t on the scene at Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping for the disastrous Section 8-stravaganza, but it’s been reported (and those reports have since been corroborated) that some sixty people required medical attention, 20 were transported to the hospital, and the crowd got at least moderately unruly (though no arrests were made) as people stood waiting in the summer sun, an outcome even the most myopic bureaucratic entity should have seen coming.

Still, East Point city councilman Lance Rhodes is defending the manner in which the applications were distributed — and blaming the media for the melee.

In an email to East Point ethics board member Thelma Roberts, Rhodes wrote:
I am in complete support of the East Point Housing Authority and I am extremely proud of the implementation of our contingency plan that was executed by our Police and Fire Department today. They did an outstanding job.
He continues:
I must respectful disagree with the assessment that this was disgraceful. Given the guidelines EPHA must follow and given the fact that I have been involved in this process over the past several days, I believe the EPD and EPFD all responded with expertise.

Rhodes, who assisted in handing out applications at the even yesterday, says the EPHA had expected and prepared for a crowd of about 10,000, a far cry from the 30,000 who showed up. He says the swell in attendance might have been caused by false media reports that actual housing vouchers would be distributed.

He also disputes the media’s characterization of the even as a “riot,” even though there were cops in riot gear on the scene. He says those officers were all part of the plan, as they are “anytime there is a large group of people gathered in one place.”*

Rhodes apologized if the EPHA event was an “inconvenience” to members of the community, adding that housing authority and city officials will “work to improve this type of program.” It’ll likely be a long, long time before they have to worry about that, however. The last time the EPHA opened the application process was in 2002 and it’s taken the last eight years to get through the waiting list that developed at that time — that list contained only about 2,400 people.

• Scary.