Interview with Robert Dull, Part One, November 17, 2016

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M1: Okay, we’re live.

ART CAIN: Okay, it’s November the 17th, 2017. My name is Art Cain. I’m at the University of Georgia, Griffin Campus, Office of Continuing Education.

M1: Next, Jewel.

JEWEL WALKER-HARPS: I’m Jewel Walker-Harps.

ROBERT DULL: And I’m Robert Dull, go by Bob. I’m CEO of the Griffin Housing Authority.

CAIN: Bob, we’re very happy to have you here today to have a conversation. I want to start with having you tell us a little bit about your background: where you were born, where you grew up, and anything -- whether you have brothers or sisters -- just a little bit about your family background.

DULL: Well, I was born in Dearborn, Michigan. My family, my extended family, we moved around a lot. My mother was a single mother, for the most part. We were extremely low income, so we traveled a lot. We were a stereotypical low-income family. I had three brothers and two sisters. We lived in multiple locations around, predominantly on the West Coast. We lived in places from Seattle to, predominantly, Los Angeles. We grew up in public housing in Los Angeles -- north Long Beach, Compton. One of my brothers was put up for adoption. My younger brother and I were from the same father. My two sisters were from separate fathers. So, we were a stereotypical public-housing family, so to speak. My mother did the best she could. She was not a high school graduate. So, in my particular family I was the first one to graduate from high school.

We grew up in the ’60s during the civil rights, Vietnam protesting, tear-gassed Watts riots, civil rights riots era. We lived in Los Angeles during the times where we were introduced to the National Guard taking control of public housing, to tear gas, to Bobby Kennedy assassination, to the Martin Luther King assassination. The Black Panther being, believe it or not, one of my heroes when I was young because they were the ones actually reaching out to the public housing at that time providing meals in the morning and interacting with the community. So, that was my first exposure to community outreach, and actually providing breakfast in the morning, and actually being the first positive role models when I was young. So -- and the Boys Club. I used to tell people if it wasn’t for Boys Club, I probably would be in prison because they actually gave us guidance and leadership when I was young. It was also during the Vietnam War. So, I was an early protestor. I was a very avid Vietnam War protestor at 15. (laughs) I was also a very good hydrocarbon aerosol graphic artist, which is a euphemism for I like to spray paint things on walls. (laughs) And was caught and arrested for it. I was asked to leave the household because it put my mom’s public housing in jeopardy. So, at a young age I was independent. If it wasn’t for intercession by some church leaders... I ended up putting myself through high school and then got drafted and went into the Navy.

I swore I would never be in public housing. I told my mom, “You’ll never see me in public housing again.” And God has a sense of humor because I got into property management, because it was an easy way to keep a roof over my head and evolution of my career ended up putting me right back in public housing, this time managing it. So, I ended up working for private management companies managing public housing in Chicago and Atlanta, in Texas, in Miami. Some of the worst public housing in the United States, places like Roosevelt and Jane-Abbott and Cabrini-Green, all of the worst public housing you can imagine in the United States. In Atlanta: Carver Homes, Techwood, Castleberry, University Homes in Atlanta. So, I was part of the transformation working for private companies. So, I guess my success in some of those was just the fact that, having grown up in it, I had a different perspective. I saw that public housing was a trap. And that I didn’t see it as exactly a means of providing shelter. It was more of a trap because it caused many families to become overly dependent on a system that provided more penalties than means of helping families get out of it. So, what you ended up doing was causing families to be generationally dependent on it. And it grew to be quite frustrating. So, I was part of the transformation of public housing that started in the early ’90s and really picked up steam in Atlanta in the late ’90s. And then I just became -- went through a period of illness, and I had to ramp it back down and had to slow down the pace. I was traveling a lot. Probably the pinnacle of my career was when I was flying from Atlanta to Chicago to Florida every week for two years. And that takes a toll on you. So, then I -- circumstances changed. My career had to slow down and the evolution of that ended up to where I had an opportunity to come to Griffin. And coming to Griffin was a small housing authority -- it’s the smallest number of public housing units that I’ve ever had to deal with, smallest number of property management units I had to deal with. But it allowed me to slow down my pace of life. It had three properties: one senior property, Nine Oaks, of 50 units; a community called Fairmont Homes, which was 80 units; and then a family unit known as Meriwether Homes, which was 120 units; and then the town of Griffin. I kept telling myself, “You should be in bigger.” But then, you know, I prayed a lot about it and started researching what the need was, and it gave me just enough to manage and just enough to develop that I said, “Well, this will keep me busy until I can, you know, wait out my retirement.” And lo and behold, the circumstances here were not what I expected. (laughs) It was a challenge. When I came in, the housing authority was headed down a path of development that, based on my experience, I just did not think was the right path. And then I started doing the research. And, literally, I spent two years studying the direction the housing authority was taking. I spent two years studying the history of Griffin. And when I started researching that history which, to be quite honest, I’d never done before in any other community. I just took it as this is a project. I’ll check. I’ll do that project. Never really looking at the human scale of a project, more looking at -- you know, like Atlanta, you have 500 units. Tear down 500 units; replace 500 units. You look at Chicago. You’ve got 1,000 units. In Chicago we had one project: 3,000 units. Do you ever look at the human scale of 3,000 units? You never really have a lot of time to look at it down to one individual family. And that’s one of the problems I had with the whole neighborhood transformation process. You never look at it in the faces. You look at it in the numbers. Well, coming to Griffin, I had never really recognized issues like segregation. Never looked at issues like the impact of poverty as it relates to children or to seniors. So, in Griffin it was small enough to see the impact of revitalization when it came to individuals and families. And it was eye opening for me, because I saw for the first time that the cycle of poverty comes down to a toddler. If a toddler isn’t exposed to opportunities to learn how to read, then the toddler is going to be coming to me in 20 years to be asking for a unit in public housing. So, I’m perpetuating a cycle of poverty by simply not addressing the issue of literacy on the family I’m housing today. So, it started to have an impact on me. And then if you look at a senior, if you look at an individual -- a single individual who’s 55-years old -- and they’re waiting out the clock for Social Security; and they don’t have enough retirement savings; and they’ve worked hard for their entire life for Social Security that isn’t even a livable wage; and they don’t have an opportunity for decent housing, then they’re going to be dependent on me for a decent place to live in 10 years. There is no way they’re ever going to be able to afford a decent place to live. So, I look around Griffin. And I look at the condition of the housing. Those people are going to be preyed upon by landlords. They’re going to take advantage of them with a substandard house because they’re not going to be able to afford anything better than substandard. And so, I began to understand that a community is part of the illness of poverty. Housing -- a roof over their heads -- is as much a contributing factor to the cycle of poverty as everything else. And the community is as responsible for that problem as the individuals. But it’s very easy for a community to sit back and say, “See? Those people are doing it. They’re responsible for it. They’re the ones that aren’t doing it. They’re lazy. They’re part of the problem.” And I just said, “I can’t do this.” I mean, it was very easy in the past to say, “Tear down 3,000 units. Replace it. Move on.” And in Griffin, I couldn’t do that. I’d never in my life had a hometown. I suddenly realized I have a hometown. And that’s what Griffin became to me. If I’m going to have an impact in my last years of life, I can have an impact in Griffin. And that’s the way I feel about Griffin. I am not going to drive by a substandard house where I see a senior citizen sitting out on the porch where her sewer lines are not even connected, paying 300 dollars a month rent, and her thinking that’s the best I can do. That’s not good enough for me. So, if I have to tear down 120 units, I’m replacing 230 units because I want to give the city the opportunity to say, “That’s not right. I’m going to address that with the landlord, tear it down, and give that senior citizen a nicer place to go.” And that’s what I’m going to do. If I can -- now I look at units replaced as a place for the city to take action against some of these landlords. That’s unacceptable. And if I have to shame them, if they have to ridicule me in the press, let them do it because this is my hometown, too. And I’m not going to sit back and watch these people get taken advantage of. Now, the kids are the same thing. I grew up in Los Angeles. We didn’t have segregation like they have in the South. So, this is the first time I pulled out blueprints and I saw, on blueprints for Meriwether, it said “White Only.” And then I pulled out blueprints for Fairmont: “Black Only.” In Los Angeles, public housing was public housing. Now, they’d have a geographical shift where this neighborhood -- you know, it might have Compton, or it might have Bell, or it might have South Central, or it might have Long Beach, north Long Beach -- where the demographics of the area might shift based on market trends where it might be predominantly white, might be Hispanic, or something like that. But it wasn’t built with the intention of being black only or white only. This is the first time I saw that kind of specific demographic built into the architecture. And so... And then I started talking to the community. “Oh yeah, I remember when that was white only.” Or, “I remember when that was black only.” And then as I was researching more about the Fairmont community, I found things like, “Oh, they used to have a swimming pool over there.” I said, “They had a swimming pool?” And then I started asking the question, “Well, where’d the swimming pool go?” And they’d go, “Oh, they filled it in.” “Why’d they fill it in? Why is there one over at City Park and not one over in Fairmont?” And they were telling me, “Well, they were trying to desegregate the pools. And rather than desegregate the pool at Fairmont, they filled it in.” I’m going, “What?” And, you know, I’m from the West Coast. I had no idea at the time, when I was young, that kind of battle was happening because we were not part of that discussion in Los Angeles. Now, I’m going to tell you, in Los Angeles we had different kind of things. In Los Angeles in public housing, which they didn’t have here, we had armored tanks that when there was riots going on, they assumed public housing would blow up. So, they put tanks at the entrance to public housing to keep us from coming out because they thought we were going to burn down our own housing. So, while you were filling in swimming pools, we had tanks at our entrance. So, it’s all relative to where you’re living, but there was a struggle going on. But Griffin was in the middle of it, too. And then I started hearing about the desegregation battle between the high schools. And then I started hearing a little bit about the history -- oral history -- about Fairmont High School. And then I heard the good things, about how when Fairmont High School would go play football, and the band would rally in the football field and march through the streets, and all the people would come out of the house and follow the band to the football game. And that choked me up, because we didn’t have that in Los Angeles. We didn’t have anything close to that kind of spirit. And as I was driving around the Fairmont neighborhood, I saw the houses and the way they’re dilapidated and the way they are rundown. And it even, just thinking about it now, chokes me up. Because I started thinking what happened to that spirit? What happened to all those people’s love for that neighborhood? And I can just imagine what that must have felt like when that band, when the drum majors marched down the street. You know, I don’t -- I’m not sitting here pretending to say I know what that was like. But I know what pride is like. And there was a pride there that has been wiped out. Wiped out by either people aging out, passing away, and then the kids being disillusioned to the point where they left Griffin and then never came back. And I think that’s part of what happened. And so, I look at the Fairmont school. I had no idea it was a Rosenwald at this time. But I was inspired by the Fairmont High Band, something as simple as the band marching. And then I looked at the school and, I’ll be honest, I have an affinity for old buildings because I believe that history has a presence. And so, I had an opportunity to just walk around it. And I met a gentleman named Louis Greene, who has since passed away. He was the Director of Parks and Recs. And he says, “Oh, yeah, this neighborhood has historical context.” And I said, “You know, I really want to redo Fairmont Homes.” And so, I made some calls -- because we were trying to decide whether to do Meriwether or Fairmont -- because I wasn’t sure Meriwether was in as bad a shape as they were saying it was. And then when I found out the difference between the white only and black only, I said, “Well, are they doing that because of the past label? Are they doing that first? Why aren’t they doing Fairmont first?” And then I found out the reason is because the slum and blighted housing in the Fairmont neighborhood was so bad, so bad that it wouldn’t pass DCA -- Department of Community Affairs -- scoring. It was so bad. So, because the neighborhood had deteriorated so bad, it wouldn’t get the scoring or the credit scoring from the Department of Community Affairs. So, it would never get the funding. That’s the reason why they picked Meriwether. So, I said, “Okay, well I’ll focus on Meriwether and go down that path.” And I kind of had to step away from Fairmont. And so, I applied for Meriwether and I thought we wouldn’t get it. But I totally changed the strategy towards the tax credit strategy. We -- I convinced my board that the direction they were going was wrong. And we changed to a different strategy that we’d used in other cities. I brought in a private developer that went for investors. And, lo and behold, we got our first phase funded, which surprised me, to be honest. But I really relied on past experience on putting together a model that worked, and put Fairmont to the side for the time being, and started thinking, “Well, we’ve got to figure out a way to show Fairmont can turn it around. Simultaneously at that time, HUD issued a notice for grants for capital fund community center grants. This was about four, four-and-a-half, five years ago. What it was designed to do was to take a community center and provide funding to have a one-stop shop in a neighborhood that would provide localized resources for Head Start training -- job training, a multitude of programs -- that would be the core community services for that neighborhood and help revitalize and regenerate a neighborhood. So, at first, I was looking at a school that was up in the north side of Hill Street. That was the old textile -- somebody had bought it and turned it into a textile center. It was the old Hill Street Northside School --

WALKER-HARPS: -- Northside...

DULL: And the owner said, “Oh, I want a million dollars.” Well, that would have taken too much of the grant funds. So, I was kind of disheartened. But I mentioned -- I spoke to Louis Greene, who was the Director of the Parks and Recs. And he says, “I’ve got a project to show you.” And he had already done some research on the Fairmont High School site, which I had already driven by, and I was already enamored with, particularly because of the marching band. And he showed me this plan that the county had asked a local architecture firm to look at. And it was just... It was amazing to me. And that weekend -- it was like two weeks, two-and-a-half weeks before the grant application was due -- there was a documentary that came out on Georgia Public Broadcasting about the Rosenwald schools. And I said, “Well, this is either God’s timing or what?” But I had never heard of the Rosenwald schools. And suddenly I was inspired. I said, “Okay, now this is either coincidental or an amazing twist of fate.” But then I started hearing about Julius Rosenwald and started hearing about the whole story of the Rosenwald school. And the fact that there was this gem in the middle of Griffin, that suddenly it was the school that nobody in Griffin knew about. Well, there were some people that knew, but I think a lot of people refused to know. But then I saw the evolution of the Rosenwald, and how the Rosenwald Foundation, and I took it upon myself to just educate myself on it. And I became inspired. It became something that I just -- so, I threw it into the grant. I brought grant writers. I brought everything I could possibly bring in. And I said, “There needs to be a hook,” because we were competing against cities like Seattle. It comes back to those big, politically strong cities: Seattle, Chicago, Boston, all the big hitters. And I knew -- they told me when I first talked to the Washington office about this -- they knew of me. So, they knew I -- you know, “Oh, who is Griffin?” And I put everything I had into this grant application. I started thinking, “We need a hook. We need something that nobody else can use.” And I talked to Jewel. I talked to school. I talked to Partners for a Prosperous Griffin. I talked to Spalding Collaborative -- mind you, two weeks before the grant’s due -- and I said, “What can we do to prove that Griffin is worthy of a three-and-a-half million-dollar grant to take this Julius, this Rosenwald school and the front part of it, which was the Mainstay Academy, and use this as a core for this neighborhood revitalization?” And we came up with the term “Educational Prosperity,” because one thing we could not at that time say about Griffin, we couldn’t guarantee jobs. But we had Southern Crescent. We had the University of Georgia. And one thing that we could manufacture in Griffin with certainty, because of the schools that we had, is education. So, if we can promote education as a means of prosperity, that we would take that label and we would say it’s an Educational Prosperity Initiative and use that as the core of that center. So then I said, “Somebody’s going to go after us for that name.” So, then I studied -- we studied -- on the web to say, “Okay, who’s using ‘Educational Prosperity’?” And, believe it or not, worldwide there is only one group that “Educational Prosperity” -- and that’s in Pakistan -- and it’s a group of women that use it to teach women how to grow goats. Worldwide. So, I said, “Now that is a sign that this is probably something we can use.” So, something as simple as “Educational Prosperity,” with all the universities in this state... Now, there’s “Prosperity Education” and all of that. But, you know, with all the universities in this country, “Educational Prosperity” has not been labeled. So, we’re going to -- that’s when I called Jewel. I said, “EPI. We’re going to take it.” We submitted our application and we missed the first round by one point. What was our first score? I’m blanking right now. I think they funded everything 87 and above, and we got an 86. So, they gave Seattle -- so, we asked for a debriefing. In the debriefing they said, “You didn’t provide proof that the community is willing to provide support for this.” So then we said, “Okay. You are going to do this next year.” We got UGA. We started doing our Young Scholars. We started doing all that kind of stuff. And we started our community garden. We got the county to tear down one of the buildings for our community garden. We got UGA Ag Center to do the garden as a formal program. We got NAACP to be engaged. We got the Partners for a Prosperous Griffin. We got unbelievable partnership. The next year we got a 94. They funded 95 and above.

CAIN: Oh, wow. (laughter) I didn’t know that. Go ahead.

DULL: Yeah, we got -- and then we asked for a debriefing. We didn’t get the 95 because we didn’t show that we had a bilingual program, that we’re reaching out to Hispanics. But our demographics show we didn’t have a high enough Hispanic program in Griffin to have -- we did say in our grant that we would, in the event that we had bilingual, we had bilingual translators available. But we didn’t have a comprehensive bilingual --

WALKER-HARPS: -- program --

DULL: -- engaged into the... So, needless to say, we were frustrated. We had the Georgia State Department of Labor going to bring in craftsmen to do all of the things -- we were going to show that there was a progressive education forum that took Rosenwald’s “Separate But Equal” Wing, that showed the front part, and we were going to have the auditorium as a fine arts academy. We had it down. And we didn’t get it. Well, there’s never a bad grant application. That’s the way I look at it. (microphone noise) Oh, I’m sorry. I probably just made a big noise. Wow. But (laughs) -- but I’m just saying. Like I said, there’s never a bad grant application. Out of this process, I think we built a coalition of partners that cannot ignore Fairmont anymore. So, at the end of the day when you drive by Fairmont School, there’s work going on at Fairmont School. The windows are all pulled out. A building is down. A garden is growing. And if ever there’s going -- another grant comes along, we’re ready for it. The community now embraces Rosenwald as a fact of life. The community embraces the “Separate But Equal” Wing as something. They’re going to do something about it. They don’t know how they’re going to pay for it, but they’re going to do something about it. So, even though we got caught in a political... They did fund Seattle. They did fund Chicago. They did fund Boston. They did fund Rome, Georgia. They funded Rome, Georgia, because Renee Glover from Atlanta went up there and was part of a program that went up there. And so, you know, Griffin’s not going to be left behind. Griffin still has brought millions and millions of dollars here. So, they know we’re not going away. And I think we had something to do with it.

WALKER-HARPS: Was it strictly politics with Rome?

DULL: Yes. That -- and people may say that’s sour grapes on my part, but I -- the data we gathered, I’d given to the county. And the county’s going to use that as they apply for grants. But at the end of the day, (sniffs) we’re ready for any grant opportunity that comes along.

CAIN: Bob, you seem to have a wealth of experience in working with housing authorities prior to coming to Griffin. And it seems like, from your earlier conversation, how you view your job and the role that you have taken has just grown enormously compared to, say, traditional housing authority management. How did all that happen?

DULL: Well, one of the things -- and particularly in Griffin -- is when I first came here, the board was really living with the stigma that the Griffin Housing Authority had gone through some battles in the past. The reputation in Griffin had been marred by some past issues with the executive directors, either through the press or through political battles. You may be familiar with that.

WALKER-HARPS: Yes.

DULL: I mean, it was really bad. So, under the state charter powers, I had to -- we went through several trainings with HUD. And with conventions, we went to some training sessions. And then I went to the city and presented the state-chartered powers. And some of those powers say that the housing authority really has a role beyond just project management. Our role is not just to manage the project, but really to be the moral compass, so to speak, of housing in the cities we govern. Many housing authorities have been relegated to be just that, manage the projects. But when housing authorities were initially established under the Public Housing Law in the late ’30s, the original mandate was just -- it was before they ever built public housing. They were originally chartered to take care of the shanty towns that evolved out of the Depression, because many of the shanty towns evolved because many of the municipalities promoted them as a means of housing cheap labor. So, during the Depression, many -- and in the South, particularly in, like mill towns and things like that -- they kept these shanty towns in place because it was a means of housing cheap labor.

Public Housing Authorities were formed because they were authorized to get rid of substandard housing, to tear down shanty towns, and to hold local municipalities accountable for those. So, at one time, housing authorities even would subpoena, they would hold hearings, they would actually go after tearing down shanty towns. So, when I started meeting with the city and the county, and pointing out that -- our state-chartered powers, the local community here started saying, “Wow. We can use this.” And so, the City of Griffin has partnered with us like never before. So, where we were kind of considered a pariah before, now we’re an active partner. So, when you see that our relationship with the City of Griffin has evolved, now the county wants to be an active partner. And the City of Griffin, we had partnered with them to tear down areas that were so substandard, they should have never had people living in them. I’ve torn down houses that have, quite literally, been used in movies to represent (recording glitch) slave houses that were still -- they’ve been torn down since -- that were still occupied --

WALKER-HARPS: -- occupied --

DULL: -- in 2010 and, you know -- in areas like Booker and Lincoln Road, and stuff like that -- right across the street from our elementary schools. So, you know, I’m proud of that. I’ll stand up and tell -- on a mountaintop -- and say we were responsible for taking down some housing that when the kids walked down the street, they’ve got to walk down the middle of the street because they were dangerous neighborhoods. So, you know, I’m proud of that fact that in Griffin, our housing authority -- my board -- supported me in saying we’re not going to tolerate this and we’re taking our state-chartered powers to the letter of the law in saying we’re not going to stand for it. So, did I go outside of the normal ED powers? No, it’s just that I wasn’t doing my job, or my predecessors weren’t doing their job before. Now we’re doing our job as it’s mandated by the state charter. So, when you see me kind of weaving in and out of the area, it’s just because I think we’re finally starting to do our job. And I’ve also heard, like this week, the Atlanta Housing Authority is starting to do the same thing. So, I think there’s a wakeup call coming on. Another important thing that’s happening, this coming November: every municipality, every county, every jurisdiction, and every housing authority has to, by November of 2017, submit a Further affirmating Fair Housing action plan that says what are you doing as a community to address this disparate treatment that’s been allowed to go on too long, where we’re turning a blind eye to these housing conditions that continue to go on unabated? And so, I think it’s a good time, because we’re way ahead of the curve.

CAIN: You know, I can envision a mammoth challenge in having this transition, because what you have to do as you transition from where things are or were --

DULL: Uh-huh.

CAIN: -- to something that’s much better, is displacement of people.

DULL: That’s right.

CAIN: -- and having to be able to communicate to people --

DULL: Um-hmm.

CAIN: -- what is to come --

DULL: Yes.

CAIN: -- is something that, apparently, would fall on your shoulders, to a large extent. Or to your board, or --

DULL: -- I agree.

CAIN: Yeah.

DULL: I agree. And, you know, it took 80 years to get to this point. That’s the problem. And part of what the city of Griffin is doing -- which, to their credit, we’re a partner with and the county is a partner with -- you’ve got to know where we are to know where we can go. And we’re in the process of doing a city-wide study -- every house, every neighborhood. That will really be the proof of the -- you know, you never know until you look. And the problem -- you can’t even consider how to address the problem unless you know what the depth of the problem is. And I’ve told them, “When you do this, you’re going to have to figure out the resources.” But when I’m fearful of is that it will go on a shelf. You know, we tore down 120 units. We’re putting back 240 units now. We’re not tearing down any more units in the Griffin Housing Authority portfolio. We are redoing -- like, at Fairmont, we’re reconditioning, rehabbing them for another 40 years. Putting brand new kitchens in. Putting brand new bathrooms in. So, at the end of the day, Griffin Housing Authority started with 250 units; we’ll have 370 units in our portfolio. Most of the addition will be in senior units because, to me, that’s the log-jam that’s coming down the Mississippi. That’s also the highest group of people that are being taken advantage of by substandard housing is our seniors. So, you cannot go out and say, “I’m going to throw you out of a house,” without having a place for them to go. I think that addresses your problem with displacement. The problem is, you don’t want to displace people. You want the people that own these houses, that are renting these houses to people, to do what’s right: make them habitable. Hold them accountable to get them up to livable standards. The problem is, the landlords aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So, if they’re getting a fair and decent rate of rent, then you should be giving a fair and decent place to live. Some of the landlords are just not doing that. And so, what we’ve got to do is find a way of replacing... The problem with Griffin is they have not made it developer-friendly. If there are developers that will come in and build replacement housing, that’s what we’ve got to do. That’s what we’re trying to do, is say, “Look at what you can do if you come in and invest in Griffin.” Just like we’re trying to do an economic development. We can get developers to come here and build replacement housing. That’s what many of the landlords are fearful of. That’s why they’ve made it hard to develop here. And that’s why we’re trying to show the fact that we’ve gotten three tax-credit awards in a row every year. That shows DCA is saying, “Come to Griffin.” If we can get people to come here and build replacement housing, we can address the blight problem. Until we can show that it’s developer-friendly, until the city council and county commissioners say this is a nice place to come and invest, we’re going to living in -- because the problem is, 2008 we did a study. There were 1600 substandard houses in 2008. They’ve only torn down 400. There were 2200 on the bubble that were considered fair to low-fair. There are about -- we’re in the middle of the study now. If those fair to low-fair were on the bubble, then it’s reasonable to assume some of those have dropped below that. Now, that means that there are probably 2,000, or even -- let’s say fair -- 1500 that have dropped below the bubble. I hope landlords have stepped up. But we’ve got to put the pressure on the landlords to invest in their rental units. So, that means, does Griffin become known as the place where everybody’s living in poverty? Everybody’s living in substandard housing? I don’t think that’s a reputation we should want. So, we’ve got to find a way to incentivize investors in either helping them fix up their units, or do we just turn a blind eye and let the people live in substandard housing? I mean, Henry County has got its problems. But Griffin doesn’t want the reputation of being the place -- especially when you’ve got such big institutions like UGA and some of these other institutions. It’s disparately impacting three of our neighborhoods. Three-quarters of the city is predominantly minority, and that’s where its worst impact is. And I think as a community we’ve got to do something about it. But you’re right. Where are the resources to do something about it? You know, that’s the -- and then you’re right; it's going to fall on me. (laughs)

CAIN: Right.

WALKER-HARPS: Because the state and economy powers that be are showing no intent. Or are they?

DULL: Well, but that’s the catch-22. When you -- (sighs) there is... No action is action, in my opinion --

WALKER-HARPS: -- um-hmm.

DULL: -- because they are investing in finding the -- exposing the issue. There will be resources. When you expose the problem, then you can ask for help. To ignore the problem, then you expose yourself that you’re not doing anything about it. I’m a believer that if you say, “We’ve got a problem that our resources won’t help us fix,” then it kind of shows that you’re saying, “We’ve got a problem; we know it. How can you help us?” I’m a firm believer that it’s a lot easier to ask for help if you tell the truth, than it is to ignore it and not ask for the help.

WALKER-HARPS: Well, that sort of conflicts with what Archway is doing -- and perhaps the city, too -- with this new branding or re-branding.

DULL: That, well... (pause) Granted. But part of it is, they’re not going to be able to ignore the truth, my point is. I mean --

WALKER-HARPS: Yeah.

DULL: -- or that they’re not going to be able to ignore at you.

WALKER-HARPS: They’re not going to be able to ignore. And it means that somebody -- or somebody’s going to have to put a tack in the seat, you might say, because right now it’s almost a cover up if you say that “Come to Griffin because of all of the good things.”

DULL: Well, Archway is going to be part of the delivering of this message, though, because they’re a part of this study.

WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm.

DULL: And -- I’m sorry -- but, you know, at the end of the day, this Further Affirmating Fair Housing -- which every municipality is going to be responsible for sending to Fair Housing Equal Opportunity Office -- that’s a dose of reality people are going to have to face. It’s just every city in the United States is going to have to submit this.

WALKER-HARPS: Perhaps that will be an issue or it ought to be an issue into retreat.

DULL: Retreat? Oh, yeah --

WALKER-HARPS: -- at the, yes.

DULL: Well, it will be.

WALKER-HARPS: Okay.

DULL: It will be. They don’t have a choice.

WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm.

DULL: I mean, we’re all investing in a 60,000-dollar study, so it’s no choice.

WALKER-HARPS: Okay. So, that should absolutely be one of the items on the agenda.

DULL: Well, it’s --

WALKER-HARPS: So, when we ask what is it that ought to be on the table, that’s one of the things --

DULL: -- well, the other thing on the table, which -- you know, you were asking about my role -- at the center of this study, which the county and the city have made very clear, is the key to the future of all housing is the housing authority. So, you know, I do not think I will be here during these days. But at the future, a primary person at the table will be housing authorities at every major city. So, our role is going back to what they did in the late ’30s when they formed housing authorities.

CAIN: You know, when housing authorities were formed -- ’30s, ’40s, the early evolution of housing authorities -- there was a lot of pride in those units, and people who moved --

DULL: -- yes --

CAIN: -- to those units. And it just seems like a lot of that was lost --

DULL: Mm-hmm.

CAIN: -- and that part of that mission ought to be to bring some of that pride back in some kind of way.

DULL: I think if you go to Meriwether One --

CAIN: Mm-hmm.

DULL: -- and when we get the senior buildings up, you’ll see that start to be restored. I think what’s been lost is the fact that -- and I’ve seen this in other cities -- is that public housing is not a right. It’s a privilege. And somewhere something got lost in the translation. It became -- and if you watch sometimes how the residents come in and talk to staff, and part of it is the staff’s fault -- it became so bureaucratic. It’s like, when I first came to Griffin, there was a plastic wall. And you’ve got a little hole. And the bureaucracy is ... (coughs) The bureaucracy is when you see a little senior citizen, has to stand on her toes and shout up through a little hole to ask a question, and you see one of my staff members yelling out through the hole to the senior citizen to ask a simple question, that just makes me angry. Because that’s not what we’re about. So, I’ve removed those plastic walls. I mean, something as simple as that kind of bureaucracy, that’s where public housing lost touch with its residents and residents lost touch with the staff. And in some housing authorities, (coughs) they even put bullet-proof glass. But yet, I can’t recall in all my years in public housing somebody has come in and tried to shoot somebody in a public housing office. But that’s that disconnect where people assume because they live in public housing that they’re a threat. Because there is a stigma associated: because you live in public housing, you’re a threat to somebody because the world says if you live in public housing, you’re a criminal. Now, when I was in Chicago, I saw the bad of public housing. I saw little kids running down the street shooting at other kids. I saw gangs that were... But, you know, I would walk into the same building where a kid was running out, shooting at another gang member, and they’d say, “How are you today, Mr. Dull?” You know, there is a strange paradox when it comes to respect and the cultural issue that’s facing the world in which they live in. There are some paradoxes out there that it’s hard to explain. There are cultural issues going on in the inner city that, you know, we can’t explain. But they are unique to each city. What’s good in Los Angeles is not the same issue that’s facing Chicago. What’s good in Griffin is not the same thing that’s in Atlanta. That’s the real paradox of public housing. But Griffin can solve Griffin’s problems if it starts looking at it from Griffin’s perspective. Don’t try to solve the problem as it relates to Chicago or something like that. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned in Griffin.

CAIN: You know, one of the other things about public housing is I think as a goal -- as one goal -- you’d like to be able to have people come in, have public housing opportunities, but not have it be something that’s permanent. Try to have people grow and develop and be able to go into another kind of housing situation --

DULL: Mm-hmm --

CAIN: -- and an affordable situation for themselves outside of public housing. And I’m sure that’s something that you have to think about.

DULL: Progressive.

CAIN: Yes.

DULL: We have a progressive housing program. I’m about to have my first two mothers progress into home ownership. I’m building them two brand-new houses on 15th Street. Now, they have to see that. The problem, the trap in public housing has been -- let’s say Fairmont community -- it’s not a label. It’s just if you can look...

You know, in certain circles they would say this is insulting, but when you think of the label as a whole, Public and Indian Housing. That is the department in HUD. So, when you look at Public and Indian Housing, that is the department in HUD that the department public housing is in, Indian Housing is reservations. So, it’s Public and Indian Housing. So, they have the same mental and bureaucratic type, and the fact that that is even still in existence today, is a label that tells you everything. So, if they look at Indian housing as a reservation, why would they not think of public housing as a reservation. And the fact that there is no outcry from anyone that they’re even considered in the same department, to me, it’s just... Yeah, you’ve got to hold your hands up. Because to me, it kind of illustrates the dynamic of what we’re dealing with. They just say containment. It’s all about containment. And so, when you think of progression, let’s look at Fairmont. Fairmont is the neighborhood that is literally surrounded by blight. So, if you look at the conditions of Fairmont -- when you drive into the Fairmont community -- the neighborhood itself is blight. But Fairmont is relatively clean, well maintained, and it’s almost like a fort in the middle of a bad neighborhood. So, it’s like a contained, like a little Fort Apache in the reservation. And that’s the way HUD looks at it. They don’t want to invest in the around. So, we will make a reservation in the middle of a bad neighborhood. And I keep telling people, “Why would you want to move out of Fairmont into the surrounding neighborhood?” So, when you say, “What sort of progressive housing do we have?” I’m not leaving! It’s safe here. It’s safe. Square Foot Ministry is trying to build three houses just down the street. They can’t even get the houses done because they’ve broken out the windows; they’ve gone in and trashed... They’ve already stolen wire twice. Why would you want to leave public housing? So, if you don’t have a progressive housing program that people say, “Okay, why would I want a Square Foot house if they can’t even finish it and the neighborhood trashes it?” So, when we look at the dynamic of how do we transform a neighborhood --

WALKER-HARPS: (whispers) EPI.

DULL: EPI. (Walker-Harps laughs) We’ve got to start saying, “There is a better way.” You know, here’s another thing: I went to a conference in Portland and they were talking about how Denver Housing Authority and New York Housing Authority in certain communities transform their high school graduation rate. And I know we’ve talked about this here. But they were talking about third grade literacy. And I know we use that benchmark here as well. But something as simple as tracking high school graduation rate based on different benchmarks and milestones of literacy, they transformed that by book swaps. Their maintenance men have literally a library on their front seat. And their office staff have literally a book swap library. So, when they go in to do maintenance calls, they say, “Give me a book.” “Well, what book have you finished?” And they swap a book right then. So, their whole culture is about book swapping.

WALKER-HARPS: And that’s where we’re going now.

DULL: Oh, okay.

WALKER-HARPS: That’s why I --

CAIN: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) She asked --

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) on EPI.

CAIN: -- yeah, you can try and do that --

DULL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- but they went from a 63 percent graduation rate -- and in seven years -- to a 92 percent graduation rate. I was shocked that something as simple as book swaps changed the literacy rate by changing the whole culture. When parents come in, when they bring a child in, they start out. And when you come in next month, if you bring your child, bring a book to swap.

WALKER-HARPS: But you started that here with EPI.

DULL: Yeah.

WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. You planted a seed. And we are now nurturing the seed --

DULL: Yes.

WALKER-HARPS: -- with our Project AWARE, Raising A Reader, with the connection with the public library here, with the medical atlas coming in on it. We’re going to have a family hour with books with the Saturday morning -- the planning of the Saturday morning story hour or reading books in the Fairmont neighborhood.

DULL: Mm-hmm.

WALKER-HARPS: All of these are limbs that are branching out from that little seed that you planted when we started EPI.

DULL: I’m still just -- and you know, I’m a big, firm believer in prayer. I’m a big believer in -- you know, you secular university people, I know you probably don’t believe in that. (laughter)

CAIN: No, we do.

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

CAIN: I do --

DULL: I am a big believer --

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- what is happening --

CAIN: -- prayer makes --

DULL: -- that this is like, you know, if in four years I get to stand in front of a pulpit somewhere and say, “Let me tell you a story about breads -- fish and loaves.” Because, when you take a million dollars -- and truthfully, Art --

CAIN: Yeah.

DULL: We’re about to issue 62 million dollars in bonds. To take a million dollars and get 120 million, that’s some testimony.

CAIN: That’s huge.

DULL: That’s a testimony --

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- but that’s what --

CAIN: That’s something that makes a difference.

DULL: In a little town like Griffin, with only 26 million people?

CAIN: Right.

DULL: That means I’ll have leveraged almost 4 million dollars for every individual in Griffin to bring housing. That’s pretty --

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) And that benefits us. What has happened --

DULL: -- that’s pretty awesome.

WALKER-HARPS: -- in our community --

CAIN: -- it is awesome --

WALKER-HARPS: -- up to this point, over the last few years and up till now, didn’t just happen because --

DULL: Not me. My board, the city, the investors --

CAIN: -- but, Bob -- and you’re kind of modest there -- but leadership matters. Yeah, yeah.

WALKER-HARPS: It matters. What has happened in the Fairmont community and on a broad scale didn’t just happen because someone woke up one morning and decided they wanted to do something kind. It has taken a lot of work behind the scenes. And you were part of it.

DULL: Collaboration --

WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) And I have been a part of it, too. You have been a part. It didn’t just happen. They didn’t just decide, all of a sudden, we’re going to put this on the SPLOST. A whole lot of sweat--

DULL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- I’m not even counting SPLOST dollars --

WALKER-HARPS: -- and a whole lot of tears went into --

DULL: -- there is UGA dollars that came into this. If you talk about the economic impact of all of this, it will end up being about 150, maybe 170 million dollars.

CAIN: Well, economic impact, you start looking at multiplied effect.

DULL: Yeah.

CAIN: And so, it can be three, four times the dollars that come in. So...

DULL: Oh, man. I won’t sleep tonight --

CAIN: Yeah.

DULL: -- thinking about multipliers.

CAIN: Yeah.

WALKER-HARPS: Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Richie. I thought you had to go.

CAIN: I do have to go.

WALKER-HARPS: Oh, okay. (laughs)

CAIN: I’m packing up.

DULL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) I just handed him (inaudible) (laughter)

WALKER-HARPS: Aww.

DULL: Just kidding, Mark.

END OF AUDIO FILE