News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena are off the air. Click here to learn more.

Notorious Flint housing complex going away thanks to federal grant

Flickr User Ken Lund
/
https://flic.kr/p/yNMxk2

One of Flint's most notorious public housing complexes is going away - thanks to a $30 million federal grant.

Congressman Dan Kildee says Atherton East was part of a bad approach to public housing in the 1960s.

"Concentrating poverty in housing projects that are in the least desirable parts of a community, the cheapest land."

In this case, the housing was built on a floodplain and residents experienced chronic flooding. 

NEWS041WEB.mp3

"Well, there's a reason the land was so cheap, it was isolated from the rest of the community and in this case was in a floodplain."

They were also cut off from the rest of the city by I-475.

Current residents will be relocated closer to services, and the NEW complex will be outside the floodplain.

It'll be a mixed-income development, not just low-income.

The grant also includes literacy and job training for residents and better access to health care.