The act allows developers, who in the 1960s received cheap federal financing, to pay out of their mortgage agreements and go yupscale. Despite lukewarm and complicated assurances from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that they will receive Section 8 vouchers to continue living here, tenants at Lawrence Road face an uncertain future at best. A widow at Lawrence Road apartments says she won't be able to care for her aged mother if forced to leave. A grumpy group of elderly Russian Jews congregates at a rusted picnic table. Intermingled among them are wide-eyed Ethiopians and European Americans who have emerged from their apartments to give visiting Santa Clara city officials a piece or two of their minds.
Children run and scream in the background.
Their parents and grandparents complain noisily in three languages. Finally, a thin voice pipes up above the din. Local HUD officials have been just as vague. An elderly Russian man with wing-like eyebrows voices his worries in fractured English. We are old people.