A permit issued by the City of Vicksburg indicates that within a month or so Speed Street School may be no more.

In a story reported by Danny Barrett last week, Bogalusa, La.-based Will Branch Antique Lumber was identified as the contractor to take down the structure, built in 1894 at 901 Speed and converted into apartments almost 70 years ago.

In a conversation, Warren Guider, an engineer and inspector who operates Envirosav in Vicksburg, said after a tour he was impressed by three things: One was the structural integrity of the 115-year-old building and another, related, was the quality of the heart-pine flooring, cypress support beams and the brick in which the horse hair used as a binding material could still be seen.

Third, Guider said, is how impressed he was with how much of the structure will be recycled.

With a bit of sanding and planning, the flooring, molding, doors and other component parts will find their way into new and high-dollar homes, apartments and condominiums across America.

Now contrast how fine the building is with how it went to pot.

It is a familiar story; one lamented before.

Public housing is most-often envisioned as squat, brick homes or rows of unadorned apartments or as high-rise tenements. Such is the architecture of government-owned housing, the variety usually managed by a housing authority.

But a vast category of public housing — much larger than that managed by housing authorities — consists of privately owned homes and apartment buildings where the rent of low-income applicants is subsidized or paid in full to the owners.

It’s into that cycle that Speed Street School fell.

The script involves absentee owners who are not motivated to meet anything but the barest minimum standards because their rent payments are guaranteed. It involves tenants who really can’t complain or who can be ignored if they do complain because they can easily be replaced. And it involves incredibly lax oversight or pure indifference by federal bureaucrats.

Just as they had with Walnut Towers, a privately owned federal office building in Vicksburg several years ago, city inspectors finally mustered the courage to deem Speed Street School unfit for human habitation. By the time the last tenants moved out, raw sewage was dripping from the ceilings in lower-level apartments from clogged pipes up above.

The former absentee owners had made their money, and the new owners chose not to try to keep the project going. They will apparently sell the building’s parts — worth far more than the whole.

For the record, Speed Street School is the last 19th century school building in the city. For the record, when it was abandoned as a school in 1940, it was transformed into private apartments that were safe and well-kept for decades. For the record, it was not until it was added to a rent-assistance program that decay set in.

To be filed soon by prospective owners is an application to transform the former Carr Central High School into 54 rent-subsidized apartments. The project is “iffy” at best, given that plans have twice been refused when submitted by a previous owner. Two advantages for Carr, if approved, are that it is on a main street, Cherry, and that the company making the proposal has a record of keeping its properties in good repair. Speed Street School is off the beaten path and being out of sight no doubt helped it remain out of mind.

But there’s a pattern here that should not and cannot be ignored. With the best of intentions, state and federal housing programs of the last few decades have been designed to help provide affordable homes. But because there has been little to no oversight, not just here but all across America, buildings — though sturdy and sound — have become dilapidated.

When you think about it, it’s a national shame.

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Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail cmitchell@vicksburgpost.com.