The good news these days for residents of the failing Thames River Apartments is that help may be on the way.

This exit strategy, which will help them escape the deplorable living conditions there, comes in the form of an application for a federal Housing and Urban Development program that will give tenants rent vouchers to allow them to move wherever they want before the apartment towers are torn down.

Mayor Michael Passero says he is confident HUD will approve this emergency demolition strategy.

The bad news for the city is that the lawyer who brought a class-action lawsuit over conditions at Thames River Apartments is insisting on terms of a stipulated resolution of the suit that a replacement housing project be built elsewhere.

This amounts to a legal sword to the city's throat.

Indeed, the mayor, in what I may say has been a high point of his new administration, working to give these tenants freedom to move on their own terms, says the days of putting the poorest of the poor in one location should be over.

And yet there is the legal sword, insisting on more warehousing of the poor.

"They are going to have to come up with a new location," attorney Robert Reardon told a reporter after a proposed site for new subsidized housing at the former Edgerton School, by a for-profit developer, was turned down by the city's Planning and Zoning Commission.

"That's not my problem. That's their problem," Reardon told the reporter.

A different lawyer, one representing the for-profit developer that wants to build the new project in a neighborhood that largely doesn't want it, vows to appeal the city's zoning decision to Superior Court.

And Reardon says he is prepared to go to court to enforce the stipulated order and judgment saying new housing must be built.

Never mind that, even if it got zoning approval imposed after a court appeal, it would never be built in time to help the tenants living now in buildings that may not make it through the winter with a makeshift boiler.

I'm no lawyer, but I would suggest New London and its Housing Authority have good arguments at hand if Reardon does go back to court to demand a new housing project.

The judge in charge of the stipulated judgment surely would see that the city has responded in full to the spirit of the court order, working to get the tenants out of the terrible conditions in which they have been living.

The mayor has re-invigorated the Housing Authority with new board members and there is new management in place to move along the demolition plan.

Indeed, the order specifically says the parties should be prepared to be flexible going forward.

HUD's approval of the emergency vouchers allowing tenants to move where they like would eliminate that reason for building a new complex for the poor.

The only reason left to build another development is to make money for the developer, or to concentrate more poor people in a single city neighborhood — social engineering I'm sure no judge is interested in ordering.

In fact this could be foisted on the city on two different legal fronts: the zoning appeal and enforcing the soon-to-be-outdated court order.

The mayor already has deployed his new social services director to begin planning for the relocation of tenants and to put landlords on notice that more residential units may be needed.

Many landlords of private housing say they generally welcome tenants with the HUD vouchers, guarantees on the rent. And HUD says it will help inspect and approve local private housing stock.

If more housing in the city — or in other towns in the region, for that matter — is needed, then let market forces determine that, not an order from a judge.

Tenants also may choose to move out of the city and even the state and spend their vouchers wherever they want. Certainly some may do that.

I'll bet few of them would choose another warehouse.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com