HOPE VI innovator dies

Dr. Arthur J. Naparstek, an urban redevelopment expert whose thinking helped generate the federal HOPE VI public housing rebuilding program, died April 24 in Cleveland, where he had been director of the Cleveland Foundation Commission on Poverty and a professor of social work and former dean at Case Western Reserve University. He was 65. Born in New York City to immigrants from Poland, Dr. Naparstek in the early 1990s directed a report on community-building in Cleveland that became part of the thinking behind HOPE VI. In a National Public Radio program in 2000, Dr. Naparstek said, “People are poor because they lack relationships with people who have access to resources and power.” HOPE VI seeks to mix poor people with those who are better off. u