Public housing and the Chapel Hill Housing Authority, 1974–1994

On January 9, 1974 Chapel Hill Housing Authority chairman Edwin Caldwell Sr., a member for ten years, and commissioner J. S. Bennett resigned, saying housing needs had gone unmet since the authority merged with the Redevelopment Commission and that the new board cared more about budgets and salaries than housing. The same day Mayor Howard Lee asked for a full investigation of charges of misused funds and administrative problems in the town's housing program, which then had 156 public housing units. On February 13 Lee reported that the inquiry had found bad judgment and indiscretions by some employees, among them an employee who had tried to get $150 from a building contractor and was reprimanded, and personal long-distance calls, since repaid; the commissioners under chairman Michael A. Stegman cut travel allowances and tightened bookkeeping. On April 8 director Alvin Stevenson, citing insubordination, asked assistant director Gloria Williams, who had directed the former Housing Authority from 1968 until the merger the previous September, and the relocation officer to resign; Williams said the move followed a grievance memo the two had sent to the board and the mayor, which Stevenson called a breach of agency procedure. At the Southern Orange Action Project's week-long charrette in Carrboro in June 1979, public housing tenants accused the authority and Stevenson of unfair practices and of lying to the tenants' organization.

On September 7, 1981 Wende Watson, a UNC senior in Afro-American studies and vice chairperson of the Black Student Movement, was sworn in to the authority's Board of Commissioners on Mayor Joe Nassif's appointment, for a term to August 31, 1986; the Daily Tar Heel called her the board's first student member. Her first task was to name a street in Colony Woods West, where new public housing stood, and she planned to name it for a Black man who had contributed to public housing. At a Town Council hearing in the week of September 21, residents of North Forest Hills, Lake Forest and North Shore presented petitions, letters and speeches against the authority's plan for 32 public housing units on seven acres at Piney Mountain and Eastwood roads, arguing that the site was two miles from shopping, jobs and recreation and too dense for a single-family area; their spokesman said it was not a racial issue, and council member Marilyn Boulton agreed the site was too remote. On September 28, after almost two hours of debate, the council voted 7 to 2 to grant a special use permit for the 16 HUD-funded duplexes, with Boulton and Jim Wallace voting no. The Piney Mountain Resident Association, which said the project would lower property values, sued the town by November 10, contending that the council had acted improperly and that the neighborhood already had more than its share of assisted housing and poor bus service; planning director Mike Jennings disputed its reading of the zoning ordinance and census figures. By February 12, 1982 Superior Court Judge John C. Martin had denied the association a temporary restraining order and ruled that the council had not erred in law or acted arbitrarily; the association's president said it might appeal.

In Carrboro, which had first sought the project from HUD in 1978, the aldermen voted 4 to 3 on January 26, 1982, after a two-hour hearing, to lend the authority $10,000 to secure land at 612 North Greensboro Street for 30 units of public housing for low-income families. Mayor Bob Drakeford and Aldermen Ernie Patterson, Hilliard Caldwell and Steve Rose voted for the loan and Joyce Garrett, John Boone and Jim White against it, and a petition with 241 signatures objected to the cost and to concentrating low-income families on North Greensboro Street. On March 23 the aldermen approved the plans for the six-acre tract, 4 to 2; Garrett and Boone cited crime, traffic, drainage and the concentration of low-income families in one part of town, and Caldwell answered that the Chapel Hill police chief had said crime in public housing was no higher than elsewhere. In early October executive director Alvin Stevenson said the 230 public housing units for low-income, elderly and handicapped residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro were filling, with about 300 people on the waiting lists and 82 more units due within two years; he and a worker with Joint Orange-Chatham Community Action said students able to split high rents were crowding low-income families out of the private market. By February 17, 1983 Site, Inc. of Greensboro had made the lowest of eight bids, $875,000, to build the Carrboro project, Oakwood Apartments, for completion by February 1, 1984, subject to HUD approval. The authority required 80 percent of the families to earn less than half the town's median income and expected bids within four months on 52 units for the elderly at Church and Caldwell streets and 32 family units at Piney Mountain and Eastwood roads. In June 1983 the Carrboro aldermen granted the authority a temporary permit to build Oakwood.

By January 17, 1986 public housing manager Mary McCallister counted 260 families in Chapel Hill public housing, more than 86 percent of them minorities and 20 percent elderly or handicapped, with 23 paying no rent and 79 paying less than $100 a month, and two to three hundred people waiting for the 52 houses opening in the coming month; she said federal cutbacks were forcing rent increases and might force the sale of some sites. On October 6, squeezed by federal budget cuts, the authority, independent since 1962, asked the Town Council at a work session for money to keep up its 312 low-rent units, which needed an estimated $3 million in repairs. The council discussed taking over the authority's work and weighed a payment in lieu of taxes or $50,000 in community development money without deciding; tenants spoke for keeping an independent authority, and the council set $35,000 to $70,000 as the price range of affordable housing in Chapel Hill. On March 23, 1987 the authority's board voted 5 to 4 to become dependent on the town. The same night tenants of its 312 apartments in Chapel Hill and Carrboro told the Town Council at a public hearing that they feared a town takeover would mean eviction and sale of the units; council member R. D. Smith and Town Manager David Taylor said federal rules barred any sale and no one would be evicted. In April 1987, after a rent strike and other problems in the 1980s, the town council took over public housing from the separate housing authority and ran it as a town department.

By October 27, 1988 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had given the town a grant of about $1,173,600 to build 24 three-bedroom public housing units for lower-income families, part of money Congress set aside for about 5,000 new units nationwide; town housing director Tina Vaughn said no construction schedule had been set. By November 14 a settlement among North State Legal Services, representing public housing tenants, HUD and the town provided $100,000 to refund utility overcharges dating to 1982, which arose because the old housing authority had not raised tenants' utility allowances as rates rose; refunds were to come as rent credits or checks. In the week of October 23, 1989 Chapel Hill was one of 32 North Carolina communities chosen for federal modernization grants, receiving $221,406 to repair or replace roofs on 41 apartments at the Airport Road and Pritchard Park complexes and to upgrade kitchens in 60 apartments at the North Columbia and Craig Street-Gomains developments. Vaughn said the town would apply for $259,000 more the next year.

In October 1990 Superintendent Gerry House told the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education that the schools no longer met the system's racial balance policy, and she noted that students from 13 of the 14 public housing developments in the two towns attended Phillips Junior High. On December 3 the board dropped a guideline that would have spread students from public housing neighborhoods among the schools, after member Ted Parrish argued it would stigmatize those children. In the week of October 28, 1991 the Town Council accepted a $136,000 Drug Elimination Grant from HUD for a two-year plan in the town's public housing: a full-time drug elimination coordinator, part-time workers in the neighborhoods, a van for youth outings, youth scholarships, and more weekend and late-night patrols and lighting; Chapel Hill was one of 26 North Carolina towns to win such a grant. On November 3 about 100 people gathered at Town Hall and marched through the town's low-income neighborhoods calling for more affordable housing, safer streets free of drugs, better play areas for children and better-paying jobs in the town and at the University. The Residence Council of the public housing communities' elected presidents led the march; its chairwoman Maxecine Mitchell, District Attorney Carl Fox and attorney Alan McSurely spoke, and UNC housekeepers described working for about $11,000 a year. On November 25 the council added $75,000 in new federal money to the project for 24 three-bedroom public housing units on Airport Road, raised its public housing improvement ordinance by more than $1 million for repairs at Colony Woods West and 751 Pritchard Avenue Extension and lead-paint testing in the Craig-Gomains subdivision, and voted to prepare a Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy to qualify for federal housing funds.

On February 10, 1992 the council voted 8 to 1 to have its staff redraft HUD lease amendments that would let the town begin evicting public housing residents arrested for drug crimes in or within two blocks of a public housing neighborhood, after Mayor Ken Broun and council member Joe Herzenberg objected to eviction before conviction; public housing residents the Daily Tar Heel interviewed backed the rules to make their neighborhoods safer. On February 24, with residents' leaders asking for stricter rules, the council unanimously adopted two lease changes, one barring drug-related activity by tenants in or near public housing and one requiring the Housing Advisory Board to find a tenant guilty of drug or criminal activity by the greater weight of the evidence before an eviction, and sent a third resolution, letting tenants evicted on drug charges return if later found not guilty, to the Housing Advisory Board. On June 8 the council voted 7 to 2 against a resolution that would have let tenants evicted over drug charges return or get a rehearing if acquitted, leaving the February 24 policy in place. Mark Chilton and Herzenberg voted for it, Chilton saying tenants could be punished by arrest rather than conviction; Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos said the process met due process. On the night of October 29 a fire that began in a bedroom closet at Ridgefield Apartments, public housing on South Estes Drive, did about $25,000 in damage and left 25 people temporarily homeless; the fire marshal called it "very suspicious," and residents said it was the fifth fire there in two years and blamed faulty sockets, which the town housing director denied. On November 9 two public housing residents, from Airport Gardens and the South Estes Drive public housing, joined the town's Housing Advisory Board on the council's appointment; Broun said a significant share of the board was meant to be residents, and council member Joyce Brown said they spoke for people who were not being heard.

In April 1993 the town applied for a two-year, $156,000 federal grant for more patrols, security improvements, a youth activities van and a resident activities coordinator in its 312 public housing units. In Carrboro, volunteers rebuilt the Carr Court Community Center with supplies donated by businesses, and Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird, who had rallied them, opened it on October 3 as part of an effort to reclaim a neighborhood where drug dealing had moved in. After public housing residents showed council members a videotape of broken pipes, holes in walls, sewage backing into sinks and unsafe playgrounds, the town manager promised on October 25 to fix plumbing and structural damage, repaint apartments, inspect every unit each quarter and meet regularly with residents; housing director Tina Vaughn said the complainants' 18 apartments would be repaired first and the rest upgraded with a $433,000 HUD modernization grant.

In February 1994 the 24 new three-bedroom units off Airport Road, built on 6.5 of the 44 acres the town had bought from Duke Power, stood finished for families due in early March. That month the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Residents' Council sent HUD a video documenting conditions in town public housing, and HUD's Greensboro office said it would review the management of the 13 complexes. On February 8 residents told Town Manager Cal Horton and Police Chief Ralph Pendergraph they had heard promises of repairs before, and council chairwoman Joann Shirer asked for visits instead of mail-in repair cards. On February 28 the Town Council formed a Special Committee on Public Housing of residents, town representatives and at-large members to recommend improvements and move toward resident management, as Horton reported 11 of the 20 apartments named in the residents' petition repaired and 41 more needing substantial work. On March 8 the Housing and Community Development Advisory Board asked for local money for preventive maintenance, since public housing had relied wholly on federal money since 1987, and on March 28 the council adopted a $1,070,035 public housing budget for 1994-95 and asked HUD to let $200,000 set aside for a maintenance building go to repairs instead. More than 300 people came on May 25 to a fun night at the Hargraves Center linking residents with 18 service agencies, and in November the Residents Council, formed about five years earlier, won a $100,000 federal grant for office equipment and leadership and management training, which Shirer called a first step toward independence.