STATE COMMISSION TOLD PUBLIC HOUSING IS NEEDED IN THE CITY

Local spokesmen for Cape Girardeau's black population Monday night told members of the Missouri Housing Development Commission that public housing is needed here to meet low-income and minority housing needs.

Michael Sterling, president of the Cape Girardeau area chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the city has a large unidentified minority population that needs affordable housing.

Sterling made his comments at a public hearing conducted by the Missouri Housing Development Commission at the Cape Girardeau Holiday Inn. The commission is holding hearings across the state to receive public comments on its Comprehensive Affordable Housing Strategy (CHAS).

The document is needed for the state to qualify for federal Housing and Urban Development funds.

About 15 people attended the hearing. At the hearing, officials who worked on the CHAS explained the strategy and solicited comments from the audience. Among the commissioners at the hearing was Missouri Attorney General William Webster.

The commission identified three priorities in Southeast Missouri for housing programs that should help female-headed households, support low-end housing options, and encourage single-family home ownership.

Sterling said the city has refused requests to establish a public housing authority here. He said that without the authority the opportunities for federal housing assistance are limited.

"We've got a large homeless population and you don't see it because families take them in," Sterling said. "We've got places where 15 to 20 people are living in one home."

Sterling and Bernice Coar-Cobb, vice president of the local NAACP, said housing that is available for low-income and homeless families is poor quality. Sterling estimated the city's homeless population to be 300 to 400 people.

Coar-Cobb is a Southeast Missouri State University faculty member in the school's University Studies program.

She said many housing units are crowded to the point that they're no longer healthy or safe. "It's not unusual for this to happen in the African-American community because of the extended families," she said. "But it has extended itself to the point that some of us can't take it anymore."

Coar-Cobb said much of the public housing in the Bootheel cities of Caruthersville and New Madrid are much better quality than that available in Cape Girardeau.

"The basic problem is there's no public housing at all here," said Sterling. "All we have is the existing HUD units and a lot of it is inadequate.

"We have asked the city to establish a housing authority and they have refused. We feel left out down here, especially the black community. We're at the mercy of the slum lords."

We have a serious problem in Cape Girardeau," Sterling added. "Somehow we need some low-income public housing."

Sterling said many of the available low-income units are rat and cockroach infested.

Webster said that through the years the MHDC generally has focused housing assistance in urban and rural areas, which often results in cities like Cape Girardeau being "lost in the shuffle."

He said the "outstate" areas of Missouri tend to get a smaller share of tax dollars for housing assistance.

"The commission over the years has expended a great deal on housing particularly in the inner cities of Kansas City and St. Louis," Webster said. "That's exactly why we're here.

"Cities like Cape Girardeau are lost in the shuffle. It doesn't qualify as rural for rural programs and yet it still doesn't get some of the attention larger cities get."

Susan Smith, a nurse and the designated HIV care coordinator for the Bootheel area, said she's found blatant examples of discrimination in Cape Girardeau when she's tried to help her black clients locate housing.

"When I have to look for an apartment in Cape Girardeau for a black client, it's fine," Smith said. "When I bring my white face over, everything's fine; but when the black clients come, then they raise the price of the apartment or they refuse to rent it. We need to have civil rights enforced in Cape Girardeau."

Ed Young of Perryville said he works with mentally handicapped persons, who might also be faced with a shortage of available housing as the state moves to "deinstitutionalize" mentally retarded and handicapped patients from state care facilities.