Hundreds of Hartford families are relocating this year from the city’s most dilapidated housing projects, but the process is imperfect — tenants sometimes find themselves forced into conditions as poor as the ones they left behind.
The Christian Activities Council is starting a new project to ensure residents secure safe and decent housing after leaving Barbour Gardens and Infill, two long-neglected, subsidized apartment complexes in Hartford’s North End that are being shuttered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Many residents want to stay in Hartford, in the neighborhoods they love, and others want to move to other neighborhoods outside of Hartford or outside of Connecticut,” said Christian Activities Council Executive Director Cori Mackey. "Unfortunately, the relocation process is ripe with discriminatory practices and residents face one obstacle after another as a result of the very intentional barriers put before them by a legacy of housing discrimination and systemic racism.”