For generations, there were several public housing locations in Sanford. The residents were poor, under-employed, unemployed and, perhaps trapped in poverty. Most of the residents, even those who had jobs, got public assistance for food and medical care. Illegal drugs were openly available for sale on most corners.
The graduation rate for teens was under 50 percent. Nearly half the girls under the age of 16 had at least one child. One in three of the boys had been arrested. More than half the households were headed by single parents, most of them women.
Grandparents, many of them only in their 30s, were raising a second generation of children. Three, four or five generations had been on public assistance. They lived in cramped quarters, the buildings often in disrepair. Sometimes the water or the electricity had been cut off for months at a time.
It was a stereotypical scene of urban distress. A war zone. A place where non-residents were warned not to go after dark. A place where outsiders who drove through were assumed to be looking for drugs.
It was a forgotten place.
A few years back, the city briefly took notice. Sanford, with the highest level of poverty in a fairly affluent county, wanted to do something about it. Poverty was centered in this area.
Their solution?
Close the public housing. Relocate the residents.
Now empty, the buildings remain. The residents are long settled elsewhere. The windows are boarded up. The doors are padlocked or covered. (I saw someone crawl through a hole in one door. I believe she was living in that abandoned unit. I didn’t record the scene…she is, perhaps, better living in the dark building, than on the streets and I don’t want her to be evicted because I showed the location.)
With so many homeless, might it not be better to use some of these buildings as temporary safe housing? It won’t happen.
Dozens of the empty buildings are being razed. Plans for the land are unclear.
Along The Way This Morning 