PUBLIC HOUSING MIGHT LOSE POLICE BEATS

Residents of area public housing will have to wait until after Labor Day to
find out whether the government will continue to pay for police officers to
walk a beat in their communities.

Both the U.S House and Senate passed 2002 spending bills for the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this month. But the
bills differ on whether to continue funding the Public Housing Drug
Elimination program and will head to a conference committee to work out the
differences.

Housing authorities in Greensboro, High Point and Asheboro, among others,
use the money to fund full-time police officers in public housing as well
as activities that promote drug and crime prevention.

The Bush administration in April earmarked the $310 million program --
first appropriated in 1988 by the previous Bush administration -- for
elimination, stating that providing law enforcement does not fall under
HUD's mission.

The Senate voted to restore $300 million of the funding earlier this month.
But the House, after three days of deliberation, voted not to include any
drug elimination money after a debate that centered on whether the money
was being used for that purpose.

The conference committee will meet sometime after Labor Day and decide
whether to restore all, part or none of the funding.

"We have come a long way from the money being completely dead, and it
appears the sands are still stirring," said Frank Curry, executive director
of the Asheboro Housing Authority. "If we don't have the funding, it's the
residents who will suffer." Local police and housing authority officials
have said if the money is cut, they will have to ask their city governments
for more contributions or scale back their programs.

The Greensboro Housing Authority spends roughly $362,000 of its almost
$570,000 in grant money on 10 officers and a supervisor.

The High Point Housing Authority spends about $336,000 for eight officers
and a supervisor, about $116,000 of which comes the grant. The Asheboro
Housing Authority receives about $47,000 in funding and uses it to help
fund two officers.

Officials say the money has helped produce some positive results.

In Greensboro, the number of reported offenses in public housing
communities has declined 68 percent during the past six years. In High
Point, violent crime in public housing communities dropped 40 percent in
two years.

In Asheboro in 1996, there were 125 calls reporting crime from public
housing; last year, there were 67.

"Frankly, I am rather perplexed, I am mystified, as to why any
administration or any subcommittee would zero out a program with this rate
of success,"said U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who proposed restoring
$175 million of the money. A House vote on that proposal failed on a vote
of 213 to 197, with 17 Republicans voting in favor.