Full of hope

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 25, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Wanda Milburn loves to do something every month that many people wish they could avoid.

Milburn, a first-time home buyer, loves to write her monthly mortgage check.

“It’s a great feeling because it’s mine,” Milburn, 53, said of her new Polk Street home in Old South Baton Rouge.

Milburn, who grew up around the corner from the house she just purchased and moved into in June, was able to buy her first home thanks to a federal housing grant Baton Rouge was awarded in 2002.

The HOPE VI (Helping Out People Everywhere) project funneled more than $18 million to Old South Baton Rouge.

Funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HOPE VI is a revitalization program that enables public housing agencies to demolish obsolete public housing units and create new, mixed-income neighborhoods.

HOPE VI Director Pat Robinson said the grant and the execution of the project in Baton Rouge have come to a close.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority, which oversees the HOPE VI grant and properties, will be seeking additional housing grants, but no grants of this magnitude are on the drawing board at this point, she said.

The result of HOPE VI: the tearing down of 171 dilapidated public housing units and the construction of 48 homes for low-income families.

The homes, mostly painted in light, pastel colors, are one-, two-, and three-bedroom, two-story houses along Thomas H. Delpit Drive between Terrace and Polk streets.

The two neighborhoods — RiverSouth-Thomas H. Delpit Drive and RiverSouth-Polk Street — feature new homes for families as well as the elderly and disabled.

Robinson said 27 of the homes, some of them duplexes, were rented and the other 21 homes are for sale.

A few hundred people are on a waiting list for the rental units while eight houses have been sold, seven home sales are pending and the remaining six homes are still for sale.