Word: tenants
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...neighbors, she says. Plumbing was broken and heating was, at best, intermittent. So in 1981, deciding "things couldn't get much worse and we had to do something," Gray petitioned the District government to let residents take control. The mayor eventually agreed, and in January 1982 Gray's tenant management corporation began collecting rents, making repairs and running things for itself. What the corporation got was a run-down facility with bursting pipes, flooding basements and no one trained in physical-plant management. "It was crisis that brought us together," Gray says. Welfare mothers learned plumbing skills, children were pressed...
This success led Gray to lobby Congress for changes in housing laws giving tenants the right to buy their homes from the government. The law went into effect in 1987. Prominent Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, flocked to her cause, but Kimi Gray is no conservative ideologue. Her success depends on Great Society programs such as job training to drive home traditional conservative values. "We want to bring families back together, restore our pride and respect," she says. Congressman Jack Kemp, another fan of Gray's who co-sponsored the 1987 legislation, calls tenant management a "synthesis of New Deal programs...
...project that have paid off in myriad ways: in the past six years dependence on welfare has dwindled from 85% to 2%, administrative costs of the project have dropped by nearly two-thirds, and teenage pregnancies have been cut in half. Along the way, Gray's brand of tenant management has saved the District and Federal Government about $5.7 million in operating expenses. Says Congressman Kemp: "She is inspirational, and her mind is breathtaking. She might have been born poor, but there is no poverty...
Another way the University can make its influence felt is by moving negotiations to its own territory. Turk says Harvard used this tactic in 1985 at a meeting of tenant activists, University lawyers and city officials. The activists, including Turk, charged Harvard Real Estate with neglecting the Craigie Arms apartment building...
...proposed to replace the houses with a hotel, and the Rent Control Board originally approved the plan. But tenant activists appealed the board's decision and a superior court judge recently sent the proposal back to the city board to hear more evidence...