Hammers and nails in Mt. Winans.

• Author: Krause, Kitry

HAMMERS AND NAILS IN MT. WINANS

In 1984, Baltimore housing administrators made U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials an unusual proposal. The city would renovate 140 public housing units quickly and efficiently--for 10 percent less than a private contractor would charge. What's more, it would employ the tenants to do the renovations, even though most of them didn't know a power drill from a jigsaw. No one in the country had ever hired just public housing tenants to renovate their own apartment complex. HUD officials worried that the city couldn't supervise the trainees closely enough to ensure the quality of the work would be up to federal standards. But for several years, Baltimore had been running a program training low-income, unskilled workers to rehabilitate other city projects. While none of those projects was as big as the Mt. Winans project would be, city administrators took HUD officials on a tour of their successes and convinced them they could manage a $2.2 million contract.

The 41 resident trainees, who began work just over a year ago, have now finished one third of the units. "I loved it from the beginning,' says Diane Jones, a 34-year old mother who had been on welfare for the previous five years. "As soon as they put a ruler in my hand and let me get my knees dirty, I fell in love with it.' Everyone involved in the project--the federal government, the city, the neighborhood, and the trainees-- seems to be coming out ahead. The project has been a success in large part because it is a community project: the trainees are making a contribution to their community, and the community in turn is giving them strong support that will help carry them through.

The American public often seems to view poverty programs as one huge sinkhole into which it endlessly pours money. But state and local governments, having watched federal antipoverty funds shrink in the past few years, have become much more efficient and creative in their use of what comes to them. Many programs now quickly pay back the government's investment by getting their clients off welfare, into private sector jobs, and onto the tax rolls. Baltimore's Mt. Winans renovation project would seem to be a model of such economy.

HUD officials are pleased with the progress of the renovation. The project will have cost them $200,000-300,000 less than a private contractor would have charged, and the quality of the work, say city and HUD inspectors, is at least as good as a private contractor's and sometimes better. Although the project probably won't be finished on time, it's not likely to run much more than a few months over. Since the main object of the project was to renovate apartments for low-income residents, to do it well, within budget, and reasonably on time, you could stop right there and call it a successful public housing project. But virtually without spending any more money, Baltimore administrators have made it a far bigger success.

For one thing, the city will probably have much lower repair and maintenance bills for the apartments once renovations are completed. Many of the trainees or their relatives are residents in the housing project, and are far more likely to maintain the homes they have just renovated than if an outside contractor had done the work. And they're likely to persuade their neighbors to do the same. Sandra Ricks, a 30-year-old mother who was on welfare for a number of years, is proud of the renovated apartment she has already moved into. The walls, which used to be blue, yellow, and pink, are now a light cream. The corner kitchen has new birch cabinets and a new stove and refrigerator. The bathroom has all new fixtures, and the new ceramic floor tiles have been carefully cut around them. Gloria LeGrand, a 28-year-old mother who has been on and off welfare for the past few years, describes how Ricks had insisted that everything in the apartment be done so perfectly that the other trainees nearly threw her out. It wasn't enough that the windows were clean, says LeGrand. "They had to sparkle.' Ricks then tells how a friend, in trying to hang a plant from the ceiling, put a big hole in the drywall. The next day Ricks spackled and repainted the spot. The trainees, says Carnelious Harrison, the manager of the Mt. Winans public housing, "feel they've contributed to the community. They're very proud of what they've done.' He says that their children point to their work and say "Look what mama did.'

Most important, though, the city will have trained at least 40 of its poor, three-quarters of whom were on welfare, in the construction skills and good work habits that will not only get them a job but help them to keep it. They spent six weeks, 40 hours per week, in pretraining classes given by the Home Builders Association of Maryland through a federal Job Training Partnership grant. They were paid a $30 per week stipend, which was small enough that those on welfare retained their benefits while in class. When they started renovating the housing units, 12 supervisors carefully taught them not only how to rip out walls, floors, and windows but how to replace them. Once on the job, most of those...