On Memorial Day weekend, our nation lost a courageous community leader, Bertha Gilkey, who succumbed to cancer on May 25.
For decades, Bertha had been a powerful force among a cadre of public housing residents who championed a trailblazing antipoverty strategy that promoted self-sufficiency, ownership, and upward mobility. As Bertha proclaimed, “Poor people don’t want to be ‘taken care of.’ They are smart and courageous. All they need is an investment.”
Armed with first-hand knowledge of the problems that plagued their housing developments—and incensed at the waste and abuse of the bureaucracies that managed their projects—grassroots leaders in neglected, crime-ridden, drug-infested housing projects throughout the country launched a campaign to take charge of the management of their properties.
The transformations that those community leaders engendered were of the caliber of an epic film. In fact, both CBS’s 60 Minutes and an NBC special, “Fired Up,” featured Bertha’s efforts and accomplishments.
The Cochran Gardens project in St. Louis, where Gilkey lived, once looked like a virtual war zone. It was a rat-infested hotbed of crime and despair that was referred to as “Little Nam.” Hundreds of windows were missing in the buildings—many of which had flown from their frames during high winds because of poor structural design. The top four floors of one high rise were uninhabitable because the maintenance crew had gutted the units for materials to make repairs on other floors.
Bertha began her work by organizing residents to form a volunteer maintenance crew. Its accomplishments were recognized, garnering both public and private-sector support, and the city awarded the residents a grant to revitalize the development. In 1976, the group negotiated a contract with the city and officially became the Cochran Gardens Tenant Management Corporation.
Throughout the country, resident managers launched innovative responses to problems that not only met the communities’ needs but also employed the residents. Among the initiatives they launched were a college preparation program for neighborhood youths, a community recreation facility, a daycare center, and a reverse-commute transportation project that allowed inner-city residents to take jobs in the suburbs.
First-hand knowledge of the neighborhood was the key to the solutions that were developed. When a laundry room was a hub of crime, with multiple robberies and pillaged coin machines, Gilkey appointed as the laundromat’s monitor the mother of one of the roughest kids in the complex. The incidence of crime fell overnight.
Just as she demanded responsibility from public officials and city agencies, Bertha launched training sessions stressing personal responsibility, which the residents were required to attend. “It takes more than money. It takes a change in attitude to restore a neighborhood,” she declared. “We took people off welfare in large numbers and put them to work. We took gang members out of gangs and made them fathers, and husbands, and responsible citizens who are now giving back to the community.”
As crime and welfare dependency fell, employment increased, and efficient and effective management practices were initiated, the movement of resident management brought substantial savings to cities throughout the nation.
The resident management and homeownership movement of low-income residents was supported in their empowerment campaign by Robert Woodson’s Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and former Congressman and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed bipartisan tenant management legislation into law as a result of the demonstrated successes of Bertha and her fellow self-help colleagues, including Kimi Gray and Mildred Hailey.
In his filmed interview, CBS’s Morley Safer commented that he felt safe at Cochran Gardens, but he had felt threatened in other housing projects he had gone into. Bertha’s wide smile flashed as she replied, “This is not a ‘project,’ Morley. It is a neighborhood.”
