Here is the text from the letter to the Editor of the Daily Progress from our Board Chair Deirdre Gilmore. Respond to her comments on line at the paper or on PHAR's page on Facebook.
"I watched the Housing Authority Board meeting on Charlottesville’s Web site. Belmont residents were speaking out to say they don’t want low-income housing to be built in their neighborhood. It’s a small piece of land on Levy Avenue that’s being talked about, but these residents are putting up a big fuss. The way they spoke at the meeting was very hurtful to me and other members of the Public Housing Association of Residents. Residents of public housing are human beings, but that’s not how they spoke about us. Our children deserve respect and support, not to be lumped together as underachievers. The majority of us are law-abiding citizens, just like the majority of the rest of the people in Charlottesville. We work hard, many of us working very long hours at more than one job. We pay rent, but we depend on public housing to have affordable rents. That doesn’t mean we aren’t deserving of respect. The Belmont residents don’t want us in their backyards, and they don’t want us in their front yards. They seem to want us gone. But we are the people who work in their restaurants, their children’s day care, their parents’ nursing homes. Get to know us. We probably have more in common than you think."
I can understand the the Belmont residents who don’t want Public Housing residents in there back yard or front. It’s becasue of the bad reputation that Public Housing has (well the residents) most of them are trying really hard to get ahead but need Housing and then theres the ones who are LAZY and are not trying at all and some of them might sell drugs. If I was a Belmont resident I would not want that either. Am sorry for those who are trying because I can imagine that they are trying, but not for the others I wouldn’t want them near my house either.