The soundness of her home offers great consolation. Hurricane Andrew and a parade of other storms failed to damage it. She's seen bullets fired at other Scott residences and claims they just scratched the exterior. "See, bullets don't go through these walls," she says. "I seen where they hit. They just peel the paint. Over in Lincoln Fields [an adjacent public housing project], bullets go right through the walls."
Because there are usually people outside day and night, burglars have never entered her apartment. "That's why I say I'm scared to go someplace else," she admits.
"My oldest son, he heard about all of the plans to demolish these homes. He say, 'Momma, I'm gonna come down there and find you a house.' I said, 'You ain't finding nothing. I don't want to go nowhere else.'"
Just around the corner from Harrell, on NW 68th Street, the Kinsey clan is dodging the midday heat. Three women and a man sit on chairs around a waist-high cage containing three colorful parakeets. A half-dozen children are playing on bikes or splashing through a mud puddle. Inside their apartment, two teenage boys play Nintendo Street Fighter. Twenty-one people spanning three generations share the six-bedroom unit.
"They need to be remodeled, but it ain't right to move us out and not let us back," says Malincia Kinsey, the 45-year-old matriarch, about her home for the past thirteen years. There are numerous cracks in the walls and foundations that allow roaches and rats to enter. "The roaches are so bad," she says, waving her hand through the air as if to swat away phantom bugs.
"It bad. Cockroaches be flying over your head at night," chimes in ten-year-old Shantrese, pointing upstairs to the bedrooms. "And it's hot up there when you're sleeping."
Just then two boys, six-year-old Danzel and seven-year-old Daniel, shriek with delight. "Look!" They're pointing to a roach scurrying into the parakeet's cage.
"You want to see how bad it is? I'll show you," Malincia Kinsey says. She leads a reporter to the living room and gestures to a cockroach that scoots across the floor as another climbs up the wall. But it's not until Kinsey reaches the kitchen that the magnitude of the problem becomes obvious. There above the sink a colony of 30 to 50 roaches scurries back and forth in a tight cluster by a crack in the ceiling.
"No matter how much spray I use, they still come," she notes.
Several generations of unemployed people crammed together in squalid conditions is exactly the kind of arrangement housing officials hope to eliminate in the new Scott-Carver homes. In fact a report submitted with the HOPE VI grant points out that soil erosion around the foundations has allowed rats, roaches, and termites to infiltrate the buildings. It also notes that "deteriorated clay piping" breaks down with "unusually high frequency."
Like Harrell, the Kinseys live in Sector I of Scott Homes, the first set of buildings scheduled for demolition. County officials originally told them that work would commence this summer. Malincia Kinsey bought boxes and supplies, then waited to hear more. No one, she says, told them construction was delayed. "We waiting to hear more. We don't know where we going to end up," she sighs.
These days everyone is in limbo. Residents continue to grumble as the county awaits word on the federal grant. If the money is awarded, change won't be immediate. The housing agency will send counselors to help guide residents through the process. Even then, questions remain: Will the poorest of them benefit from the move or will they be further marginalized?
Alberta Harrell has an important query of her own: Will the walls of her new home stop a bullet?
