By Sarah Becker ©2017 Alexandria’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority [ARHA] follows the money. Least cost analysis has replaced cost beneficial. Lesser payments are negotiated in lieu of property taxes [PILT]. Soft loans include below market interest rates and subsidies, to the extent they are acknowledged, are non-neutral. Opportunity costs, lost opportunity costs especially are not calculated. After 50 years, beginning December 2016 ARHA’s Andrew Adkins public housing project starts anew. Crime is problematic, the black middle class has bolted and concentrations of poverty remain. The multi-block parcel has been segregated since 1877. In 1967 President Lyndon Johnson’s open housing law, a law to prohibit discrimination in the sale and rental of housing, struggled. It died in the U.S. Senate in 1966 then suffered a second Congressional defeat in 1967. In the meantime ARHA, which had obtained funding “for 225 highly disputed public housing units,” completed its 90-unit rental project. The $1.6 million Andrew Adkins project, which opened in June 1967, was “believed to be the first colonial-style public housing project in the nation.” Architects “avoid[ed] the usual of drab, barracks-like row houses.” Why? City Council thought public housing “a bitter point.” “The location was…approved…after a series of heated public hearings,” The Washington Post wrote in 1962. “The leading objectors were representatives of the Durant Civic Association, the city’s major Negro organization. They complained that the site includes a number of Negro-owned or Negro-occupied homes which will be leveled.” “The association [President A. Melvin Miller] particularly objected because of the availability there of vacant land for private Negro housing,” The Post continued. “This is one place open to Negroes for building…” Enter black Alexandria homeowner Otto L. Tucker. Tucker, an attorney, and his brother Samuel W. dedicated their lives to eliminating racism. Their motivation: racial injustice, massive resistance, and…