The Fall of Connie Chambers and the Rise of Posadas Sentinel

Abstract

Chapter 9 chronicles the demise of Tucson’s Connie Chambers project during the 1980s and its replacement by Posadas Sentinel. The city’s Community Services Department (CSD) used HOPE VI to redevelop the property as Posadas Sentinel, part of a wider revitalization effort in the surrounding barrio. Acutely conscious of neighborhood critics who feared further insensitive urban renewal, the city assiduously worked to maximize housing opportunities for residents of Connie Chambers. As with Orchard Gardens but unlike River Garden, Tucson’s city leaders premised the redevelopment on occupancy by very low-income households, while seeking other ways to diversify range of incomes. The CSD replaced all two hundred public housing units but, rather than put these all back into the original barrio site, took advantage of the city’s peculiar housing market and scattered much of the housing across the city by purchasing homes in a variety of new or vacant subdivisions.