U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson joined East St. Louis Mayor Emeka Jackson-Hicks and U.S. Rep. Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro) for the handover ceremony held in the city’s municipal building.
Jackson-Hicks, a Democrat, said she was thrilled that city officials will now take over jurisdiction of the housing program. “It took a lot of hard work for us to get to this point,’’ said the mayor, noting that she had been working on the issue since she took office two years ago.
Jackson-Hicks said she carefully selected five people to serve on the new board that will oversee the city’s public housing program, choosing people of integrity. When the federal government took over in the 1980s, the oversight board was accused of mismanagement and mishandling money.
East St. Louis has more than 2,000 public housing units. Officials estimate that about 6,000 people, almost a quarter of the city’s 27,000 residents, live in public housing. The city has about $1.9 million in federal money to help pay for new units that will replace some older buildings.
Carson said running a housing authority isn’t easy. “It requires the very best of those who manage public housing because the folks who call these units home deserve nothing less,” he said. “I want public housing to be the center of a new dynamic. I want that dynamic to empower residents, to make them better, to give them more self-sufficiency and freedom.”
Carson also urged residents of the St. Louis region to make sure protests don't disintegrate into violence. For the past week, protesters have expressed outrage over a judge’s decision to acquit former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley of murder in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith. Stockley, who is white, fatally shot Smith, a black man, in 2011.
Carson said he hoped the protests would generate a broader understanding of the challenges facing the St. Louis region.
“We, the American people, are not perfect, but we are not each other’s enemies,” he said. Carson then quoted from the Bible. “Jesus said it best. A House divided against itself cannot stand. Never has stood, never will.”
Without getting into the specific issues prompting the protests, Carson said, “We need to learn from the defects of our society and we need to use that learning to help improve the conditions of everybody.”