PERHAPS IT SHOULD BE considered history of another sort, but those around these parts for a while were probably left hungering for more detail when Melvin Scott, security director of the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority, revealed that crime reports in the public-housing units were down 29.5 percent in the first half of 2012.

Intensive Rome police patrolling of long and steady duration has a lot to do with this, of course, but so must the general upgrading/replacement of the units themselves in recent years. It should make all those here when about all the “projects” — a term actually less heard nowadays — were known for was crime, violence and danger.

It must have been about 20 years ago when the streets through those areas were barricaded so through traffic and “drive by” drug dealing were stopped as a first step. Over the past two decades, it would be interesting to learn just how much the “crime rate” has gone down in such places while safety for residents … and their neighbors … has gone up.

That’s not to say these are universally “nice places to live” although a remarkable number of them, through various investments and social-action concentration, are certainly better called “neighborhoods” than projects.

That’s pretty remarkable and seems not to have been given the attention and focus it deserves.

That’s not meant to imply that “problems” of this nature aren’t continuing, although many suspect areas in Greater Rome (not all are in the city) are actually not near as bad as scuttlebutt makes them out to be. It is meant to say that such negative “news” has become far less prominent than it once was. If that’s indeed the result of this community, its police and public-housing folks teaming up with positive results that would be quite an accomplishment.

Maybe nobody wants to brag upon it but for those who were here when that was often the main topic of local conversation, that would seem to a pretty big change for the better.