Residents fight 'The Projects' stigma

By ROBIN CAUDELL
Staff Writer

April 14, 2008 12:06 pm

— PLATTSBURGH -- "The Projects."
Americans are conditioned to visualize graffitized surfaces, trashy grounds and lawlessness when thinking of public housing.
The national picture fragments with the Plattsburgh Housing Authority. It doesn't fit the stereotype.
"I think it's important news to get out about housing," said Sandy Tabor, a resident of the Housing Authority. "People think people who live in (public) housing are dirty and poor. You can still live decently, and your kids can be raised decently."
Tabor, a former nursing assistant at Albany Medical Center, relocated north to help her daughter, who became too ill to raise her children.
"My kids are in sports and are A and B students," Tabor said of her grandchildren. "They have a lot of friends who don't live here. It's important. People are stigmatizing people who live here as low-class, dirty people. That's wrong. It's people who can't afford to live outside."
PLACE TO START
Donna Bushey agrees. Plattsburgh Housing Authority is not the graffiti slum that people picture.
"It's not a bad place for people to live starting out," said Bushey, who lives on McGaulley Avenue. "If you lose your job, they adjust it (the rent) based on your income. It's not low-income anymore. When I was growing up, people had a job."
In Plattsburgh Housing Authority, as elsewhere, children will be children.
"It depends on the parent," Bushey said. "People get the impression if kids get in trouble, they come from the projects. Kids in the North End of the city get into trouble, too.
"The kids here are pretty decent. If a child breaks a window here, you (the parents) have to pay for it."
FELT STIGMA
Plattsburgh Police Chief Desmond Racicot spent his childhood on Plattsburgh Housing Authority property. He said there was a definite stigma growing up in the projects, but most of it came from a lack of understanding from the rest of the community.
"All I know is that I grew up in a very loving home, and we had good neighbors, and there were many great programs here," Racicot said.
"I had opportunities here that I probably wouldn't have had if I grew up some place else, and it helped shape my career path."
IT'S HOME
Cheryl Dame, a single parent, raised two of her three children -- Bart and Tia -- in public housing.
"Bart lives in North Carolina," Dame said. "Tia lives in Plattsburgh."
Dame thought of the housing as home.
"I never thought of it as the projects.' I raised my children here. They, obviously, turned out fine. My son made friends here. He knew our police chief, Desi Racicot, and Bruce Martin, a detective. They grew up here."
Increasingly over the years, Dame has heard her home referred to pejoratively as "the projects."
"You just live in the projects.' 'These are project people.' It used to trouble my kids.
"There are some really nice people here, people raising families, working and managing on a minimum wage. They found it to be a struggle."
Dame tells people she lives at 32 Bushey Boulevard.
"When I get mail, it doesn't say 'the projects.'"

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