NO ONE DENIES that Watuppa Heights has seen better days. The 52-year-old project — inhabited largely by black, Asian, and Latino families whose annual incomes average just $8000 — needs renovation. The outside looks dingy, with its moldy siding and its peeling paint. Inside, all 100 units could use face-lifts. The 1950s-era kitchens and baths require new plumbing and floors. Some units contain asbestos. Others have broken windows. As Bernice Edwards readily admits, "The buildings are an eyesore."

Severe disrepair can warrant the demolition of state-funded public housing. But that doesn’t seem to apply in this case: The structures at Watuppa, while run down, remain sound. According to Gornstein, housing experts who have seen the project believe "those buildings could be saved." In fact, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), which oversees the state’s public-housing system, considers Watuppa viable — so much so that it granted the $6.5 million in renovation funds for which city officials had applied with such public fanfare four years ago. In a May 25, 2001, 10-page letter to Mayor Lambert, DHCD director Jane Wallis Gumble made plain her disapproval of the demolition: "Clearly," she wrote, "our view is that the City ... should work to revive its Watuppa Heights development."

Even Mayor Lambert acknowledges that the home-rule petition has less to do with the development’s disrepair than with the city’s larger agenda. "The intent isn’t so much to demolish Watuppa as to downsize the public-housing units," he says. That goal stems from a 1999 study about the state of affordable housing in Fall River. The survey, conducted by RKG Associates, a New Hampshire–based consulting firm, found that 17.3 percent of the city’s overall housing fit the "low income" category, i.e., units affordable to people who earn less than 80 percent of the area median income of $52,500 per year. The study determined Fall River has a "surplus" of affordable housing and has become a "catchment area" for the region’s destitute. It recommended not only reducing the number of publicly subsidized units by at least 2500, but also scrapping the four-year-old plan to renovate Watuppa Heights.

Which explains why Lambert — and most city officials — claim Fall River has unique circumstances that justify razing the project. "Why spend millions to fix up units that are superfluous?" he asks, and then answers: "If we’re going to downsize, we might as well start with those units in greatest need of repair."

Housing advocates and others, however, reject the notion that Fall River has too much affordable housing and question the city’s 1999 study. In December, Emily Achtenberg, a Jamaica Plain urban planner, released a report about the study, in which she uncovered startling trends. Most notably, she discovered that the RKG consultants had "significantly underestimated" the need for affordable housing among Fall River’s current residents — especially those who, like Watuppa’s residents, earn less than $17,000 a year — while overstating the supply. The consultants, Achtenberg explains, didn’t bother to look at who lives in state public housing. And they didn’t take into account the roughly 3300 people languishing on waiting lists for Fall River’s three public-housing projects. Nor did they recognize that the city’s homeless shelters almost always operate at full capacity. Concludes Achtenberg, "The subsidized housing is needed by existing residents."

Further, according to DHCD statistics, Fall River ranks 10th among the top 15 largest Massachusetts communities when it comes to providing low-income housing. Last year, 10.56 percent of Fall River’s housing met the state’s affordability requirement — a mere hair’s breadth above the mandated 10 percent. Compare that to areas of similar size such as Lawrence, Lowell, and Brockton, where low-income homes constitute, respectively, 14.96, 13.49, and 12.24 percent of each city’s total stock. (Boston, Springfield, and Cambridge are the top three, with 19.63, 17.83, and 15.60 percent, respectively.) Simply put, Fall River offers as much affordable housing as it should. Notes State Representative David Sullivan, the only Fall River pol who opposes the city’s petition: "This claim that we have a surplus is the furthest thing from the truth."

Housing advocates view RKG’s findings as "faulty premises," and chalk up the Watuppa-demolition proposal to politics. Mayor Lambert, a forceful presence who dominates the local political scene, has long argued that the city has too much public housing; he even campaigned on the issue in 1999. His administration bills the demolition as a symbol of the city’s struggle for a better tomorrow — the key to building a more attractive neighborhood.

The debate also has racial undertones. An old textile powerhouse that has absorbed waves of immigrants for generations, Fall River has recently seen an influx of Asians and blacks. If you believe city officials, most are poor people fleeing escalating rents in Boston. But Achtenberg disagrees. Echoing the sentiment of housing advocates, she argues that Fall River continues to play its historic role as a "gateway community" — one that welcomes first-generation immigrants who, in turn, end up settling there. The trouble now, says Achtenberg, is that "the city wants to turn away immigrants just because it doesn’t like what they look like."

Lambert insists that the city’s position on public housing has nothing to do with racism, however. "To characterize this as a racial issue," he says, "is an attempt to stop the proposal without discussing its merits."