The Scott Carver wall inspired hope for the project’s former residents. And so the county knocked it down. Photo by Johnny Louis/jlnphotos

Last week I wrote about the apparently robust market for ultra-high-end luxury condos in Coconut Grove. This week, I’m thinking about affordable housing and in particular about the families lost and found in Liberty City’s Scott Carver project.

Right now there is a battle being waged between Miami-Dade County and a federal agency threatening to take over the county’s abysmal housing agency. Scott Carver is one of the chess pieces.

Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced that its critical financial audit of the agency has raised enough concerns that it will send seven investigators to delve deeper into the rat’s nest we’ve all come to know and hate. That’s great. The more light the better. But, when HUD finds more corruption and mismanagement (and it will) what then? It seems clear HUD wants to come in and take the agency over and this investigation could well justify that.

Had HUD come to Miami with guns blazing a year or two ago, I would have drawn them a handy map to the offices of the most worthy targets. But now, with a strong mayor apparently committed to real change, a new housing agency director from out of town, and some progress made, this seems more like a local-federal pissing contest than a righteous battle.

Did, as some have alleged, county commissioners Natacha Seijas and Joe Martinez initiate this battle by lobbying a local HUD administrator with whom they are friendly? Did they do this because they’re trying to whittle Mayor Carlos Alvarez down to size and no one else’s sacrifice is too big to serve their egomaniacal needs?

It doesn’t matter. Point is, I’m concerned about real people here. Our government, by whatever name, has knocked around and lied to the poor folk who used to live in the Scott project for too many years. Long ago, when black families were chased out of Overtown by poverty, or by the building of I-95, Liberty City was the land of middle class potential. Scott Carver was a project in which many in the community took pride.

Decades later, desegregation, crime, and the shameful neglect and corruption of public housing in Miami had turned Scott into a rotting shell of what it had once been. Then a federal program called HOPE VI came along, to demolish the projects and build single-family homes. It sounded good to many outside Liberty City, and was pushed by several local politicians (county commissioner Dorrin Rolle, among others), who were attracted by either the idea, or the big pot of money that came with it.

Activists within Liberty City were skeptical, and as it turned out, were a hundred percent right to be. Families were coerced to leave, with promises of new homes when they returned. The apartments came down, but only a handful of homes materialized. Most of the families dispersed and the county made almost no effort to keep track of them. Some 1,000 families disappeared from the rolls.

The Miami Workers Center and its affiliated residents in Low-Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT), which had been working on this issue for seven years, came up with a clever way to try to find those lost people. They built a wall of names on the last bit of brick and mortar standing at Scott, at 7255 NW 22nd Ave. They staffed it 24 hours a day, as first a few, then hundreds stopped to look for their name, or that of someone they knew. Those who came were given information about the campaign, and offers of help to navigate the county system of services. They found about 400 families this way.

Aiyeshia Hudson, 22-year-old community organizer for the Miami Workers Center, was in charge of wall-sitting. Hudson grew up in Carol City and went to college at Florida State University. She said she never expected the emotional, “inspirational” response the wall produced. She told me story after story of people crying, or proud not to be forgotten, scrawling messages to each other on that wall. After a while the wall itself became a monument and a kind of community art project. Even people who hadn’t lived there for decades shared memories, as well as donated supplies.

“It was amazing to me to see how much pride former residents had in their heart[s],” she said. “One woman was so proud to see her name on the wall. She got a little emotional.”

A local pastor found his mother, who had passed not long after being forced out of her apartment. They drew a little cross next to her name. Funny enough, Rolle and other politicians never made it out to the wall.

Predictably, the county came and tore down the wall panels and put up a fence. The group came back and put the panels back up and got the county to agree to leave them for now (they are also trying to get the building it is on designated as historic). When the HUD threat got hot, the county housing agency signed a broad agreement that basically made the county responsible for fulfilling the demands made last year, such as building the long-promised homes and giving former Scott residents first priority to occupy them.

The activists, while not exactly swallowing everything the county proclaims, think they have made real progress. Hudson and others told me that the research they’ve done shows that HUD’s track record of taking over botched local programs isn’t encouraging. They would prefer to give the locals one more chance to get it right.

It remains to be seen whether Alvarez, County Manager George Burgess or Kris Warren, the new housing agency director, will have the fortitude to fix the agency. But they should be given a chance. Let HUD put the safety on the trigger, at least for a moment.

Former Scott resident Caprice Brown, 36, feels that a lot of hurt has yet to be mended. A signature on an agreement is good, but meaningless until people are made whole.

“I won’t be totally happy until I see the groundbreaking,” she said. “I can’t trust everything I see and hear. When I see shovels in the dirt and people getting keys to their house, I can be happy.”

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com