Some of those displaced have either be relocated to one of the other 6,200 public housing units in Nashville or been located in private rentals through the Section 8 subsidy program and some left without asking for assistance, said Mike Clinard, the Hope VI coordinator with the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, which oversees Metro s public housing program. Clinard said Nashville learned from other cities who began their Hope VI initiatives in the early 1990s, in particular the need to be equipped to handle the sometimes complicated process of relocation. Ensuring that all displaced residents had places to live was one of the reasons MDHA has staggered the projects into different phases, Clinard said. They wanted to ensure that everybody that needed to be relocated would have a place in a tight housing market. Many of the residents require support as they transition out of a housing project, and MDHA has implemented support programs to help.
Nothing is perfect.
There are problems, but hopefully you re able to work through them. We ve done a pretty good job of it. Folks have found places to go. But the real problem rests, perhaps, not with people who move to other public housing projects or receive Section 8 vouchers, which help pay the rent, but with the working poor trying to make it on their own, McLemore said. But the practical effect is they are displacing other people in the market.