2002-03 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #1826
Communities in Transition

Holt: Deborah Holt, host
Clark: Ed Clark, host, NC Capital Review, WNCU-FM
Smith: Lenora Smith, P.E.A.C.H.
Whitley: Melvin Whitley, Durham community activist
M: Unidentified Male
F: Unidentified Female

Holt: Urban renewal, neighborhood revitalization, historic preservation—these methods of improvement can change the complexion of a neighborhood, but is it always in the best interest of all concerned? We’ll talk about communities in transition next on Black Issues Forum.

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Holt: Good evening and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I’m Deborah Holt, the producer, in for Mitchell Lewis and Natalie Bullock Brown, who are both on assignment. Talk of improving neighborhoods for the better; for example, raising property values and making streets safer always sounds like a move for the best, but sometimes these improvements can lead to gentrification and the dismantling of a community. A PBS Point of View documentary chronicles a story in Columbus, Ohio where this very thing occurred, and we’ll get a chance to look at a piece of that film a little later in the program, but right now to discuss this issue as it affects North Carolina neighborhoods, I’d like to introduce our panel of guests who are all community activists.

First, Ed Clark, a Chapel Hill resident and co-host of one of the longest-running public affairs radio programs in the state, “North Carolina Capital Review” on WNCU-FM radio. Also, Lenora Smith, a project director for PEACH; that stands for Partnership Effort for the Advancement of Children’s Health. And also, Melvin Whitley, who wears many community hats but has long been a community organizer in Raleigh and is now very active in community affairs in Durham.

Welcome all three of you.

[ALL SAY “THANK YOU”]

Holt: Glad to have you. For the purpose of working from a common definition, I’d like to get your understanding of the word “gentrification.” Let’s start with you, Ed; how would you define the term?

Clark: Well, the quick and dirty answer is the windows of community that’s been in place for a while and the folks can’t keep the community up, for whatever reason, and we’ll talk about some of those, I guess, as we go along, but they can’t keep the community up. And then people, outsiders, see that there’s some availability to take some of that property, they come in, redevelop, and those people that had made that place their home are no longer there because they can’t afford to be there; housing prices go up, you mentioned that in your intro. So, there’s a whole lot of issues behind it though; but the simple thing is that people get displaced; indigenous people get displaced and other people move in.

Holt: Melvin, anything to add?

Whitley: Yes. The process begins with the lack of capital and re-investment in a community. Without capital, people, landlords and landowners can’t see where their property value can grow. They turn their property over to rental property and which, in the long term, can be used to create blocks of new developments for higher income resident, and displace those people that live there.

Holt: I think that’s a pretty good understanding for us to all share. What I would like to do, though, is find out a little bit about what each of you are doing in your communities as activists. Lenora?

Smith: Well, currently, I work very closely with the Partners Against Crime district one PAC in Durham. One of the issues that we’ve been working on a lot over the past several years has been the Northeast Central Durham community area which is a 96 block area within the city of Durham. Recently the city has joined the partner with the community to address housing in one particular area; what they’ll be going in is totally going in and finding a developer to renovate dilapidated housing. What we’re looking at right now is providing affordable housing for the population; we sort of talked a little bit about one of the issues also that comes along with gentrification is that the native population of minorities also now has an influx of other minorities that we have to share and try to balance out how this housing is distributed. That’s one of the issues that we’re dealing with in Durham right now.

Holt: Very well. And Ed, I know that you’re doing a lot of work in Chapel Hill. Why is this so close to your heart, this issue?

Clark: Well, I attend UNC at Chapel Hill, and as a student there, I was 19 years old, and I lived in the neighborhood called Midway, which is right between Chapel Hill and Carrboro. There was a community over there called the Knowles community; a guy name Fred Parrish was trying to do some housing renovation development there, and I got involved that way. The area had gone down. It had been a very thriving area economically; there were stores there, things like that. The houses were starting to go down. I knew that there were pressures around Chapel Hill for people to build more expensive housing. Housing in Chapel Hill’s outrageous. So as a 19-year-old, me and a group of folks, we started a thing called the Midway Development Commission, and in that, part of what we wanted to do was go to the city, go to the county, find federal grant money to renovate houses so we wouldn’t have that influx of people coming in a buying up that property. Were we successful? That’s questionable. We had some success, but it’s hard to maintain it. I actually left Chapel Hill for awhile, and I’m back and forth in Chapel Hill and now I’m starting to do some work down in Harnett County where I purchased a house down there to be closer to my family.

At the same time, Chapel Hill is a very unique situation; everybody thinks it’s this liberal bastion, everybody gets along or whatever, but the people who work at the university can’t afford to live there. And that’s an issue that has to be addressed and that’s why I got involved.

Holt: It’s the same kind of thing happening in Durham that you’re finding, Melvin?

Whitley: Yes, you really can’t read a history book of Durham without reading about northeast central Durham. It was once a hub of commercial and residential glamour. The corner of Andrea Avenue and Driver, you can still look and see the historical buildings that was once a hub of commerce for the city. Myself and others, my neighbors, got involved in this because we found out that our property value was going down; although we were investing in our homes, we were losing property value. And as we dug into it, we found out there were 42 dirt streets right in our neighborhoods, in walking distance of downtown. We found that our property for the most part was going down because of a deteriorating neighborhood around us. In northeast central Durham, we have 418 boarded up homes, and they’re being used for all kinds of unspeakable things.

Holt: We’re going to talk a little bit more about blight when we come back, but as mentioned at the start of the program, this discussion was inspired the PBS POV documentary entitled “Flag Wars,” in which a community of long-term elderly residents finds itself being slowly replaced by incoming white and gay residents. This documentary portrays, in very gritty fashion, how this situation develops. Let’s take a look at four short clips from the documentary.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIPS FOLLOW]

Newscaster: An old part of town is getting a new look, but not everyone is happy about it. In fact, people are buying up homes in old town east, just east of downtown, they are fixing them up and selling them for big dollars, and in some cases, big profits. As 10-TVI Witness News reporter Kelly Hudson shows us, some die hard residents are wondering if they will survive this ___ boom.

Hudson: Displacement of elderly and low-income residents is a real fear factor here. Mallory says she’s seen in happen before.

Mallory: I’m not complaining about bringing the living conditions up; I’m concerned about the welfare of other people and how can they in turn get finance to keep their homes up. This is what I’m concerned about.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

M: Looks like it’s ready, doesn’t it?

F: Yeah, I’d love to grab that thing. It’s such a beautiful building.

M: It is. Is it a double, or what?

F: Yeah, they won’t talk to anybody.

M: Who’s in there?

F: Some family that’s been there forever.

M: Oh yeah?

F: You can tell by the curtains; they’ve been up forever, too.

M: Yeah, and the carpet on the front porch.

F: Mm-hmm. It’s a sweet house. People waiting in line for that one. It’s going to get hot. I knew it.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

M: I have a sign that says, “Chief ___, 1270 Brighton Road, [UNINTELLIGIBLE].” I went to Nigeria last year and was made a chief, so I put my name and my address above my door. I carved it myself. I’m an artist, a woodcarver. A gentleman a couple street’s down, who’s recently moved into the neighborhood, called the city inspectors and the city inspector came out and said I had to take my sign down. I said, “I don’t want to take it down.” So then they wanted me to go before the historical people and they said, “According to your plans, we don’t have any problems with what you want to do, but we have two people who want to speak against it.” They were part of the gay community, which I have no problems with them as long as they don’t bother me. I’m not gay, but if someone else wants to be gay, that’s their business. And I didn’t vote for this neighborhood to be historical but that’s one of the tools that they use to gentrify neighborhoods.

F: Next. I’m going to head back down to Brighton Road, see if I can’t find some ladders or scaffolding, some workers, and do a permit check, see if folks have their proper paperwork.

Hey, hey you doing today? I’m wanting to see what you’re doing on the paint colors? What’s going to happen, if I drive by here and I see there is a change in paint color, orders are going to get issued.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

M: Is there anyone else that needs to check in? Please come up here.

F: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

M: Good morning everyone! My name is Bill Hedrick. I’m the prosecutor assigned to this courtroom. You’re here today for an arraignment. Most people who come to this courtroom are here for misdemeanors of the third degree. Those are usually housing and zoning offenses. Technically, those offenses are punishable up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. Again, that is the maximum. Typically, that is not happens to someone, even if they’re found guilty. The main concern of this court is compliance; in other words, if there’s a problem with your property, that it is fixed or corrected.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

M: __ across the street here, you can’t match what he do, guy at the bank, and what he did to this house, to that house across the street. You can’t match that, and ___ did his daughter’s house was able to match it either.

F: They don’t know.

M: They don’t owe black folks that kind of money. This guy had contacts. The down payment he got he got from a relative. You got a relative to give you $30,000 to buy a house on a 60-day notice? Pay me back? He’s going to get $800 a month for it, don’t get me started on it. They don’t know.

[END OF CLIPS]

Holt: You’ve been watching scenes from the POV documentary “Flag Wars,” which is going to be airing on UNC-TV. Do any of these conversations, scenes, look familiar?

Clark: Well, not only do they look familiar, they should cause you pause; listen really closely to what’s happening. I think it’s sheer disrespect for the people who live in those communities. You see the realtor stand around like she’s a vulture, you know, waiting for someone to either die, or something to happen to get hold of that property. You see the people who work for the city who are supposed to be worried about zoning and stuff, being really nit-picky about things like paint and all that. When you make places, historical districts, or whatever, do you talk to the people who actually lived there first before you decide what those codes are? So I think it’s a disrespect for the people who live in those communities, and that’s what bothers me the most about it.

Obviously, if you watch the whole documentary, you’ll see that there are houses that need to be fixed; there are things that need to be done, the community does need to be improved. However, it leaves out the very people who were there and some of the older people at the end of the clip, who were sitting around saying, “Well, we don’t have access to that kind of capital.” Melvin talked about that. We don’t have access to get that kind of mortgage, or I can’t give my kid $30,000 to buy a house and close within 60 days. All of those things, if you listen really close, that’s really the nut of it.

Holt: Well, really, also, another issue is capitalism. If a group is interested in coming into a neighborhood and increasing the property value; say, for example, designating it a historic district, wouldn’t that be better, preserving that district, the culture? Melvin?

Whitley: Well, I want to talk about how historical preservation got its start, especially when historical preservation began to link the history of a house to a neighborhood. That provided neighborhood pride. And that also provided with the neighborhood pride, shortly became those people that lived there were beginning to reinvest into the property that they owned. Those houses became historical properties, like the Shepherd House that we have in Durham right across from the university. But we also have communities that were developed by people that started a community like Hicktown. So the Hick House would become historical property.

Well, that has changed over the years, so that those people that invest in historical property are investing into the architecture of the building more so than what history has provided for that neighborhood. When I have a home, that’s a real investment, that’s real capital for me. I can will it to my children, and that’s an investment. When you change the investment from home ownership to rental property, there’s this natural incentive for the landlord not to invest in that property. If he invested in the property, he may not get the upper income people to come and pay a higher rent. So he takes the property and then he drains from the property as much as he can to invest someplace else.

Holt: Now what you’re talking about are some things that will have already happened but there are probably some preventative measures to take. Lenora, did you want to jump in there?

Smith: Yeah, I just wanted to say when you talk about historic property, one of the things that comes along with historic property are stipulations about what you can and what you cannot do with that property. A lot of times, especially in these older homes, the cost for making the renovations is out of reach of the native population that lives there. Also, when you talk about these older homes, that ties into the cost are the environmental factors. In this community, you’re talking about the older Victorian homes, you’re talking about homes that may have been built in the ’30s, ’40s, that are going to have a high content of lead-based paint. And if you come in scraping and sanding those homes, then not only are you doing a procedure that’s putting toxic chemicals and particles in the air and in the soil, but you’re also exposing that population to the toxin.

There are a lot things when you talk about historic property and making those neighborhoods historic preservation issues, that communities that the native population can’t deal with. Then what you have are populations of privileged coming in, taking advantage of these neighborhoods and communities. What I saw in the clip was blatant arrogance as they came in to take stuff. They came just to take away from that community. One thing I picked up from the guy whose home, who had the carving on his home, he said that he did not vote for it to be a historic district; I don’t know if that’s a point where he had that opportunity, but what I picked up from that is that if you don’t vote, it’s like a yes vote.

So, the community needs to be involved and they need to be proactive in order to prevent a lot of these issues happening to them.

Holt: And that’s what I’d like for you all to talk about, that prevention.

Clark: Yeah, you talk about prevention. I mean, obviously, and I preach this all the time, that you have to be involved. Voting first; you can’t do anything if you don’t participate in that. I know Melvin does a lot of work around voting and getting people registered and to the polls and things like that. Once you get passed that, though, there are community organizations in place that I think need to shift their focus.

One of things that I talk about all the time is, we have the black church and we talk about how dynamic it is. It’s always involved. It led to the civil rights movement and whatever. This should be one of the key issues on the plate for the black church. In a lot of cases when you see an elderly person you can’t meet code, why doesn’t the church go in and help get that house up to code? That is one way that the money they collect on Sunday can get turned back into the community. And I don’t mind saying that I think that’s one of the failures. The black folks ourselves have to be cognizant of what’s going on.

Then the other thing that I would say, if you have an opportunity to get a historic property, think about buying it. The first thing we want to do is run to this new development, and then there’s a whole new development of black folks. The same thing’s going to happen to that neighborhood after awhile, so, you know—

Holt: But what’s really at stake here, and I also kind of want, I saw Melvin smiling with your comment about the church, because Melvin, you’re a minister.

Whitley: That’s correct.

Holt: How about the church? Where is the church in this, and what are the stakes?

Whitley: Well, the stakes are very high. In our community, you find just about every block there’s a church. That means that church has a capital investment, and what happens in that community. But you do not see that coming out past Sunday morning, and especially in deteriorating neighborhoods. I’m hoping that changes.

But we need public policy as well. We need public policy to address the problem of rehabbing property.

Holt: Why aren’t people getting more involved in community organizing and community activism? It seems as though what tends to happen is, people find themselves sitting ducks. There’s got to be a way, are there any programs in place that help prevent this kind of thing?

Whitley: There’s two ways of thinking: one is to say, “We elect people to public office and we expect them to come up with ideas and programs that would help change our condition.” Then there’s the proactive, the group that I’m involved with, that come together, we look at a problem, we do fact-finding, and then we develop our own program. We develop our own solutions. And then we take them to government? We say quite frankly, “If you don’t like our ideas, what are yours?”

It’s a way of setting perimeters for getting something to happen. The bottom line is, having nothing to happen is not an option.

Holt: Is this what you’ve found, Lenora?

Smith: In my experience, a lot of times, let’s look at the dynamics and the demographics of the community. You may be dealing with single parent households. You may be dealing with a mom who’s working two jobs. You may be dealing with some financial issues. So it becomes a matter of setting priorities. Why you’re trying to put food on the table and get homework done, you don’t necessarily have the time to run out to meetings and advocate, even though it’s really important for our very survival. But right now, you’re dealing with the day-to-day processes of living. So going out and fighting for something is really not in your immediate scope, and that’s why we’re mostly reactive instead of proactive. That’s why when you go to community-based meetings, you have the same people. When you go to the NAACP meeting, you’re going to see the same people at those meetings that you see at the community-based organizational meetings.

Holt: Now if we keep on seeing the same people at the same meetings, and I want to give each of you about 45 seconds to wrap up here, but what is going to be the consequence if people don’t get involved and find out about community organizing. Ed?

Clark: Well, it’s pretty simple: the community’s going to be gone. And then we’ll be scrambling again to find the next place where we’re going to live. We’ll just get pushed over somewhere else and pushed over somewhere else. Then we’ll further marginalize ourselves politically. That’s why I think when you talk about how do you get organized, why it’s so important, I think right now, especially African-Americans in North Carolina are further marginalized. Hispanics are doing better at organizing. They had Hispanic Day at the legislature not too long ago, and we’re not doing those kinds of things. I mean, if we don’t say anything, we’re going to be paying the costs.

Holt: Melvin?

Whitley: I certainly agree with everything that’s been said. If we take an attitude where strong neighborhoods will change public policy, and we’ll have to invest in how to make a neighborhood stronger by developing community organizers, remember, if in our history, especially in the African American community, people came together in church. They couldn’t hear a sermon that did not connect with what was going on today, with the text of yesterday. Ministers were a part of the leadership in what was going to happen in a community. That is absent.

Holt: So we’ve got a leadership issue.

Whitley: We have a leadership issue where we’re not calling people to be involved, those people that can be involved.

Holt: Lenora, we’ll give you the last few seconds.

Smith: I think that black people need to be progressive and we need to be innovative. We’ve got to come up with new ideas to address the issues that concern us. He mentioned Pine Knowles earlier. I’m very familiar with Dr. Parrish, and I believe Pine Knowles is a success story. The Pine Knowles community development, they used the habitat concept to foster home-ownership. It’s a program that’s thriving, and Dr. Parrish has resources at his disposal, by being involved with the North Carolina Central University, so we’ve got to use innovation to accomplish our goals.

Holt: Thank you so much, all of you, for being here. Some very insightful comments. I’d like to thank all of our guests: Ed Clark, Lenora Smith, and Melvin Whitley for joining us tonight. If you’d like information on this program or the work of our guests, or information on the POV documentary “Flag Wars”, please visit us on on-line at www.unctv.org/bif. Or call us with your comments at (919) 549-7167. Join us each and every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. for discussion on topics that matter the most. For Black Issues Forum, I’m Deborah Holt. Good night.

[THEME MUSIC]

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.