AJC Article: 'If I can survive here, I can survive anywhere.' --- Bowen Homes six-year resident Mario Evans; Crime-ridden Bowen Homes soon will be torn down, but its residents' future concerns some city and community officials.
Now, though, "I'm scared to walk to my car at night," she said.
If crime hadn't worsened, Veronica Forbes said she doesn't think people would be clamoring to leave. After all, for better or worse, Bowen has been home for many residents for years.
"This is where a lot of people grew up," Forbes said. "This is where they're from."
Shirley Hightower, the president of Bowen's resident association, is fighting the changes.
She clings to a conspiracy theory that the AHA is behind the killings at Bowen. She says she doesn't care if people think she's crazy.
Hightower's biggest fear is that the rules for housing authority housing vouchers won't be as lenient as the ones for public housing.
"Now what they're doing is tricking people and saying, 'We're sending you off to this beautiful place,' " she said.
In my ongoing review of the local news I can't help but to notice the increasing reference to "being terrorized" coming from the mouths of Black people regarding the conditions in their own communities.
At the end of the day I assure you that all of the politicians who CLAIM to be working in the "best interests" of the members of the Bowen Homes community and thus STOPPING the forward progress of this relocation - will walk away free without having to own up to the hazardous conditions that they have allowed these citizens to remain in. No doubt the conspiracy theory against the Atlanta Housing Authority is more powerfully ingrained in the people's minds than are any notions that their current condition is a confluence of FAILED SOCIAL POLICY come to roost.
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