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There's no end to what residents can do to better their own conditions. We're tired of depending on the people. It's a myth around the country that residents of public housing, low income residents want to be unemployed. They want welfare. They want to tear up. That's not

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so. We are the same as anyone else. We have dreams. We have visions, we have ambitions. Given an opportunity we will show you that. I'm Robert Woodson, president and founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a national organization in Washington DC committed to the self-sufficiency

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in promoting independence of America's poor. We believe in turning problems into opportunities. Working together, we will get what you want. At the Kenilworth Parkside Project in northeast Washington DC, Kimmy Gray and the other people who live there say it's working because they're running it instead of

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the local public housing authority. Kenilworth, may I help you? Kimmy Gray is chairman of the board of Kenilworth, overseeing 40 employees and a $1.8 million annual budget. A woman who used to be on welfare now controls one of the very few public housing projects totally run

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by its residents. Since Gray and her residents took over in 1982, they have actually saved the city nearly $2 million. In public housing, where rent collection is usually low and vacancy rates usually high, they have managed to do what the DC Public Housing Authority could never

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do collect enough rent each month to pay all their operating expenses. 85% of our residents were public welfare recipients or receive some sort of fixed income. That's been reduced to 30%. That's because residents of Kenilworth opened their own employment office and started their own businesses on

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the property. There's also a health clinic. Good news. Your blood pressure is under control. Do we brush it? OK, when we brush these teeth, what's the stuff called that we get rid of? And mothers with young children can go to work instead of going on welfare

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because there is a daycare center, but only for children whose mothers are working up and down. Cladette Brown is one of those working mothers. She grew up at Kenilworth, then moved back five years ago when she had her own children. I think people care a lot

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more about, you know, the neighborhood and, and, you know, what's being done and trying to run things themselves. Your home is what you make of it, you know, you can make it look just as good as anybody else's, you know, it's what you put into it.

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This is our yard, you know, we want to look nice. How do you deal with with those residents who don't quite pick up the enthusiasm of you and most of the others in terms of cutting the grass, keeping the houses up, looking after their place? You

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continue to work with them. Everybody doesn't have the same vision. Everybody's not self motivated. Some folks have to be motivated and that's our role. That's why they elected us to provide them direction, and I understand that. A lot of people think that that. That poverty makes

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you not only frustrated and dispirited, but stupid. And you are poor and you're an alcoholic, there's a program for you. If you're poor and you're unwed mother, there's a program. If you're a drug addict, there's a program. If you're a psychotic, there's a program. In other

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words, you have to express some pathology in order to be eligible for service under most government and unfortunately private programs. But what is there for a kid living in a low income community who obeys his parents. Tries to study is not on drugs is not sexually

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active. What we're really saying to a kid like this that we don't have anything for you. In other words, there's an old adage you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. And if we continue this policy and structure that rewards misbehavior,

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we're gonna get more of it. But if we turn that around and provide opportunities for low income people and reward their successes, then we're gonna get more success. It's as simple as that. The young people that come in that come in contact with us. Want the

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alternative they want to keep the community positive they want to do something to make a change and this is where they start where they live because they realize that they're gonna stay here and they wanna make a commitment to the community. So we got together and

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we took over a building in the block. And we just started to gut this building out, clean it out. And started to renovate it ourselves. It was kind of a substitute for the street gangs, you know these are the young people who wanted to do something

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positive and who wanted to stick together as a support group, but who really didn't know how to do it and they didn't wanna you know necessarily go into the street gangs that were very prominent at the time but they wanted something that was theirs, something that

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was positive, something that they could put their energy into. It took us 5 years to renovate this building. And it took us 5 years because we could not just go out and get the funds for the brick and mortar. Which is basically the materials we always

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had funds coming in for jobs, but we never had money for materials in those 5 years we had 250 people, young people come in and do work on this building whether it was volunteer, which most of them were often they would stop by or they would

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come by the building and walk by and say hey look, I did this building. You know, see those windows I put the windows up, you know I painted these hallways, we tile these floors, you know, so we have those type of things, you know, when people

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come by and they have a lot of pride in that. We actually empower the young people through training on the job training and skills and seminars, workshops, going to different conferences so that they can become leaders in. The Community and renovating and revitalizing the community gives

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them pride in their people because there's a commitment there. They want to do positive things and we give them that alternative. What you're witnessing today is that poor people are understanding that no one outside of their own community can save them but themselves and therefore they're

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taking charge of their lives and they understand that the Only real uh safety net is a ladder out of canyons of dependency and that ladder is opportunity and opportunity can only come from a fundamental belief that that development is possible for yourself. So I think what

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government can do is, uh, identify where all those kind of regulatory and administrative and procedural barriers to poor people helping themselves. Thank you for coming. Mike Fargo's struggle to keep his federally subsidized apartment drew more than 100 supporters to a noontime rally, many of them disabled,

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on welfare, and struggling with the same kind of bureaucratic rules that threatened to evict Mike Fargo because he's managed to better himself by running a small computer service from his apartment. Mike Fargo also drew the support of two Reagan administration officials, an administration often criticized for

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being unsympathetic to welfare rights. Evan Kemp from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Bob Woodson, an adviser to President Reagan on welfare reform. And we think Lawrence, Kansas will be remembered as Topeka, Kansas is remembered as the day that we struck a blow for liberty and

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allowing people. Uh, to tear down the bars that keep them from the American economy. Mike Fargo and his friends had hoped to hold their rally here on the grounds of Clinton Place apartments, but early this morning, management posted signs like these and locked the doors to

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the apartment building. But Mike Fargo and his supporters decided to test the lockout. It didn't take long for the apartment managers to rise to the challenge and call in Lawrence police. If you don't leave now by being asked, then you can be charged with criminal trespass.

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With one exception, it didn't come to that. The police didn't press too hard. Mike Fargo and his supporters held their ground, but didn't insist on doing any more than making their point. I'm gonna ask President Reagan if he would, uh, intervene with Secretary Pierce. To grant

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Mike Fargo and others a waiver that will enable him to operate his small business. The exception was Carol Johnson, who lives in another Lawrence subsidized apartment and decided to take a stand in the lobby of Clinton Place Apartments, even if it meant a trip to jail.

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What the hell, sit in the hood place or sit in jail? It's all public expense. Police call an ambulance instead of a paddy wagon, but Carol Johnson still got what she wanted a trip to jail. Still, the real story here today is there's a good chance

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Mike Fargo and other people who have to live in federally subsidized housing will get what they want, the same opportunity any other Americans have to make a better life for themselves. We think that, uh, an opportunity environment would begin to uh uh embrace some of these

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novel approaches. That uh has the potential of changing dramatically the landscape of poverty in America.