Housing

The PGA Tour makes a stop in Atlanta this week. Top golfers like Rory McIlroy and Bubba Watson will compete for the FedEx Cup. The course that hosts the event — the East Lake Golf Club — is in the middle of a once-struggling neighborhood known for poverty, crime and a troubled public housing project. The golf club has played a central role in a sparking redevelopment, and the neighborhood has avoided some of the typical pitfalls that come with such a transformation.

Resident Akua Taylor, a musician, moved here in 2013 but says she knows the area is very different from what it was like 20 years ago. Back then, there was so much violent crime, it was known as “Little Vietnam” — a war zone. “It’s been turned completely around,” Taylor says. “It’s still benefiting the people that were here prior to the gentrification.”

One of these people is 66-year-old Carl Griffith, who was born and raised about a mile from here. “I mean, it’s not perfect now, but then, it was scary,” he says.

Up until 1995, the neighborhood was home to East Lake Meadows, a 650-unit public housing complex. The crime rate was 18 times higher than the national average. Real estate developer Tom Cousins saw great potential, and also a great challenge. “Had I been born there, I’d maybe be in jail somewhere also,” he says of the old East Lake.

Cousins is the man behind some of Atlanta’s most prominent buildings, and when the city began tearing down public housing in the ’90s, he says, he wanted to try something different with East Lake. “We were going to focus our money and our time in this one, terribly deprived neighborhood and see if we could make a difference.”

The model was this: Create mixed-income housing, but pair it with quality schools and services like job counseling and child care to help existing residents. A nonprofit, the East Lake Foundation, would lead the way.
East Lake led Cousins and other investors like Warren Buffett to create a nonprofit consulting group called Purpose Built Communities to take the idea national.

But the model in Atlanta needed a sustainable revenue stream. A lot of that came from the East Lake Golf Club, which helps fund the foundation’s programs. The course used to be a neglected landscape of dry patches, where golfers might have to dodge the occasional stray bullet. Now, it’s a PGA destination. Danny Shoy Jr., who leads the East Lake Foundation, says East Lake upends the typical story line of housing prices going up and low-income people being forced out. “The people who live there have the opportunity to remain there,” he says.

Corporate membership in the golf club is $125,000, and there’s a suggested donation of $200,000 to the East Lake Foundation. The club does fund things like a youth mentorship program at a nine-hole public course in the community. But the cost means that not everyone can play here. East Lake resident Orlando Geiger says it doesn’t feel it’s a place for him. “It’s just a country club,” he says.

Shoy says he understands why some residents pushed back at elements of East Lake’s transformation. But he argues the aim of the redevelopment was to change the character of the neighborhood. “We are very intentional and unabashed about the fact that the East Lake model is disruptive,” Shoy says.

When East Lake Meadows Public Housing was torn down, residents were offered the chance to return to the new community, but they had to meet some requirements: no felony record and either employed or in training. The Atlanta Housing Authority says about 13 percent of families were not allowed back. In the end, only about a quarter of the residents returned, and that’s led to criticism that East Lake’s improvements stem from a strategy of cherry-picking residents.

“They’re only taking … the best of the best,” says Deirdre Oakley, who teaches sociology at Georgia State University. She says the East Lake model has shown success. Violent crime is down 95 percent from two decades ago. But Oakley says the success has benefited only a small group of people.

Marilyn Hack was one them. She moved to East Lake 15 years ago when she was a single mother of three. Hack says she needed affordability as she finished her education. “What I really wanted was the stability and someplace safe,” Hack says, “and that’s what I found here.”

Hack says she thinks this can work elsewhere too, even if there isn’t a fancy golf course to provide support. So far, the group, Purpose Built Communities, has taken the approach to 11 other neighborhoods across the country, from New Orleans to Omaha, Neb.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Two new affordable housing complexes are opening in Anchorage this fall. Tenants have already started moving into the 18-unit Susitna Square in East Anchorage. But building the developments required much more than construction crews and moving vans.

“Come on up here,” invites Mae Lee as she walks up the newly carpeted stairs. “I don’t have anything yet ’cause I just moved from Sacramento in maybe like November, and I’ve been living with my parents.”

A table leans against the wall and just a few boxes are scattered about. For nearly a year, Lee and her three children have been living with eight other people in her mother’s three-bedroom trailer.

“It was three of us in one small room,” she said. “It was really small. And my son had to sleep on the couch, and sometimes he would sleep on the floor. I felt bad for him.”

Lee is a single mom who moved to Anchorage to be close to family when her relationship fell apart. She found work within a month, but it took time to get housing she could afford while raising three kids on her own. Vacancy rates in Anchorage are 3.9 percent. Nationwide, it’s closer to 7 percent.

Lee walks through the three-story, two-bedroom, one-car garage apartment fawning over closet space, the new refrigerator and the chance to have some privacy.

“It’s a workout though!” she laughs as heads up to the top floor. “I’ll probably lose some weight later on. Going up these stairs.”

Lee was one of 150 applicants for the 18 new units. Hundreds more applied for the 70-unit Ridgeline Terrace complex that’s under construction in Mountain View.

“It’s always kind of amazing that we actually got from where we first talked about the affordable housing to actually moving in because it’s so complex to do what you have to do to get affordable housing built in the community,” he explains. Building costs and land costs are high in the city.

The two projects combined cost $29.5 million. Butcher explains some of the money came from the usual sources — grants, tax exempt bonds, and state and federal funding. But another chunk came from a private-public partnership made possible through the Alaska Corporation for Affordable Housing, a subsidiary of AHFC. The units qualify for tax credits because they are low-income housing and because they feature an array of solar panels that cut energy costs by 10 percent. Key Bank bought the tax credits and the money went towards construction. Butcher said that’s what made the new developments possible. And the process is repeatable.

“So it’s our hope that we’re able to be able to do this over and over again, not just in Anchorage but all over the state,” Butcher said.

Rent for the units is subsidized so that families pay only 28.5 percent of their income. But it’s only for a limited amount of time for families with working adults. AHFC works with clients and case managers to help families manage their finances, improve their skill sets, and transition toward paying higher rents.

Three years ago, a group of volunteers hit the streets and interviewed some of Juneau’s most vulnerable homeless, those at the greatest risk of dying prematurely. An estimated 60 individuals fall into that category.

Juneau’s shelter and soup kitchen, The Glory Hole, is trying to find out what has changed by doing another survey.

“How many people who were on our Vulnerability Index Survey in 2012 are still on the survey? How many of them are still alive? And what happened to their lives since then?” said Mariya Lovishchuk, director of the shelter. “Also, it’ll be interesting to see if new people are now part of Juneau’s chronically homeless population,”

Many surveyed this year will likely be residents of Juneau’s 32-unit Housing First facility, which is scheduled to open June 2017.

The Glory Hole needs 40 volunteers to help conduct the survey. That entails going to where homeless people sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

“It really helps to have good manners because we are waking people up. And then the interviewers ask folks very intrusive questions about their income levels, about their history, about demographic factors, criminal history, health,” Lovishchuk said.

The experience can be profound, she said. Lovishchuk helped survey homeless people in 2012 and said it was eye opening, even for her.

“A lot of people who worked a lot of their lives lost everything and just were never able to recover. And I know those people as people who are patrons of The Glory Hole who are chronically homeless and I never pictured their life before, as not homeless,” she said.

Lovishchuk said several of the people who were surveyed in 2012 have died. But the survey also helped connect vulnerable people to social services. She hopes it can do that again.

“Winter is coming and last winter I think we had four people die, and so we really want to create this connection prior to the cold coming so people know that we are there,” Lovishchuk said.

This year’s Homeless Vulnerability Index Survey is on Sept. 29 and 30. To volunteer or for more information, contact Trevor Kellar at The Glory Hole, email tghoutreach@gmail.com or call 907-660-7466.

The Juneau Assembly wants to draft ordinances creating new property tax breaks that incentivize denser development and redevelopment of blighted properties.

The assembly discussed it Monday in committee and also wants input from the Downtown Business Association and city staff.

Assemblymember Karen Crane asked if the redevelopment ordinance would do enough. It would allow for property tax exemptions or deferments for major building overhauls and demolition.

“When I first read this, I don’t see the incentives there for the development of housing,” she said. “I’d like to have some more discussion along that line, too. It’s one of the conclusions everyone has come to that has studied what we need downtown.”

City Finance Director Bob Bartholomew said it comes down to what level of public investment Juneau wants to make.

“It’s in addition and outside the scope of this. This could help in one little piece. But there’s a lot of other things out there,” he said.

A second ordinance would allow for property tax breaks after subdividing land for five years.

But some assembly members questioned the length of time–wondering if they could be giving tax exemptions for developers not motivated to sell. Assemblymember Debbie White said that’s often not the case.

“It’s really not as much time as you think and by the time you get the subdivision recorded and you start advertising and marketing these properties and then you design homes and then you have to take plans to permits center, five years is not that long,” she said.

White, a real estate broker, called the Montana Creek West subdivision successful and said it took about six years to develop.

The ordinances were prompted by a bill Juneau Rep. Cathy Munoz sponsored. The legislature passed it during the last legislative session.

People don’t usually plan to experience homelessness; life just takes unexpected turns. But for some guests of the Brother Francis Shelter in Anchorage, like Michael Hindman, the experience leaves them with more hope than anything else. When KSKA’s Anne Hillman spent the night at the shelter late last month, he greeted her and other guests at the door.

“All right, anybody and everybody who wants inside, please line up on the right hand side,” 26-year-old Hindman says as he opens the self-locking door to the shelter. He greets a guest. “How you doing, sir?”

It was an unusually calm summer evening. Hindman was monitoring the entrance area to the shelter and checking for contraband like weapons or alcohol.

“Anything inside of your pockets I can see?” he asks a woman as she gazes a bit past him.

Burly and tall with a goofy smile, the name of an ex-girlfriend tattooed in delicate script on his arm, Hindman never saw himself in a place like Brother Francis. He was young, strong, making good money.

“In the back of my mind I thought, ‘Why are people homeless? And I’ve always had a job. Why don’t people work and why don’t people do this?’ Maybe I didn’t have compassion or sympathy at first,” he recalled.

But a few years ago, he made a mistake.

“This is the part of the story where I’ve got to tell the truth, OK? This is my big blip. I was in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, working as a longshoreman …”

Hindman got involved with drugs, was busted for buying narcotics for an undercover cop, pleaded guilty to a felony, and went to prison.

“I learned my lesson right off the bat. My first 30 minutes in jail I realized this is not for me and then besides that 30 minutes I had another 18 months to learn the same lesson thinking, ‘This is definitively not for me.’”

As part of the plea deal he gave the state everything he owned. He was released this spring with nothing but purple prison underwear, donated clothing, and a quarter in his pocket. After sleeping rough for a couple of nights, someone told Hindman about Brother Francis. He began volunteering as a door monitor in exchange for secure housing at the shelter and help finding a job. Hindman said it completely changed his perspective.

“I no longer pass judgment when I walk by somebody, its more what can I do to help? Because whether the person, maybe they are an alcoholic or maybe they do have a temper problem, or maybe they do have a flaw, but I think all of us do. What I worry about now is, is that person cold?”

Working at the door lets him see people’s lives turn around, he said. One day they’re tired and stressed and a few weeks later they have a job and are looking bright. That’s his story, too. He was recently hired as a cook on the North Slope.

But during his off weeks he’ll be back at the shelter, helping out, and saving money to rent a place of his own. Hindman sees beauty in the echo-filled concrete halls.

“I’ve seen people with nothing to their name but they give everything they can to the next guy who also has nothing,” he said, recalling people offering up their only jacket to protect others from the rain. “I know people that make $100,000 a year that probably wouldn’t let you borrow their jacket, you know?”

He says he stays positive and hopes it helps others stay that way, too.

Just a couple of blocks off the 210 Freeway in San Bernardino, Calif., about an hour east of LA, rest a whole row of cheap, run-down motels. Some people stay for a night or two, others just by the hour.

But some rooms house families with kids — and they’re not just stopping in.

This is home for them, at least for now. They’ve run out of other options for a roof over their heads.

California ranks third in the U.S. — behind only Kentucky and New York — in the percentage of children who don’t have a home, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. And the evidence of this is clear in San Bernardino, which is littered with dilapidated neighborhoods and abandoned blocks, even in the city’s center.

Here, budget motels have become a last refuge for desperate people with nowhere else to go. Joe Mozingo, the Los Angeles Times staff writer behind the series San Bernardino: Broken City, says that kids who live in these motels get exposed to some troubling conditions.

“Drug addicts and prostitutes, people with severe mental illness,” he explains. “It’s just kind of a crazy place for a child to grow up in.”

For instance, Eddie, the 14-year-old at the heart of one of Mozingo’s pieces, had to cope with bullying, the death of his cousin and a mother who was usually strung out on meth — before she got arrested.

“So he was just totally left alone with his mom’s boyfriend, who’s also a meth user,” Mozingo says. “And he just didn’t know what to do. I’ve just never seen a kid look so lost and in need of guidance.”

At the Golden Star Inn, one of the motels just off a juncture in San Bernardino, Karen lives with her 5-year-old son, Ian. (She asked that we not use her last name to protect her and her son.) The morning Mozingo and I spoke with her, she had just filed a restraining order against her husband; she says he’s addicted to meth. She and Ian have lived in a shabby, dimly lit room for nearly three months.

In the room, there are signs of an effort to create something resembling a home. Stuffed animals and Disney pillows lie strewn on the bed, and laundry is hanging out to dry on a closet wall.

Karen, a phone psychic, pays $300 dollars a week to live at the motel.

“Normally it’s not a problem to pay rent here every week,” Karen says. “The last couple of weeks, because the situation with my husband, I’ve been at court so much, and running around so much, trying to take care of stuff, I haven’t been able to work a lot the last couple weeks. Last week was really pinchy-tight, we think we’ve got this week covered and I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do next week.”

Before the motel, they had their own apartment. But when she didn’t get enough work, she says they missed a month of rent and got kicked out the day before New Years. They stayed with a friend for a while, then got a room at a motel a few miles down the road from this one.

That place, she says, was a nightmare.

“It was like summer camp for meth addicts. Because everybody was bouncing between rooms and chit-chatting and it was this social drama that was going on all the time — all day and all night,” she says. “It was too much for the little one. And so my husband just started hitting all the motels and this one had a space, so …”

Even here, it’s far from an ideal community for Ian.

“You’ll have probation [officers] come through, because they’re doing probation sweeps … or you’ll have random naked people screaming, running through. It gets bizarre,” she says.

“And how do you explain that to a 5-year-old?”

San Bernardino is poorer than any other American city of its size besides Detroit. And in San Bernardino County, just shy of 10 percent of public school students are identified as homeless — twice the rate of nearby Los Angeles County.

“The recession hit this community especially hard,” says Dr. Kennon Mitchell, the assistant superintendent of student services for the San Bernardino City Unified School District. “Close to 50 percent of our residents receive some sort of public assistance. And close to 97 percent of our students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, which means that they’re below the poverty line.”

One prime example is Juanita Blakely Jones Elementary School, just a block away from the Golden Star Inn. Mitchell says 1 in 5 of the students enrolled there live in motels.

“And of course it causes that school to have a high turnover. They’re close to a 55 percent turnover rate over there,” he says. “So sometimes we’ll have kids drop and re-enroll two or three times in the same school year.”

The school district provides outreach. There’s a Homeless Student Program, counseling, health services, clothing and school supply donation and transportation to and from school. But the school system can only do so much.

“We can’t eliminate some of those real life circumstances that families are going through as it relates to the economy and jobs,” Mitchell says. “So what we just try to do is just try to mitigate the impact on kid’s education because we believe that the better we can educate the youth, the youth will provide a pathway for their families to success.”

As for Ian, back at the Golden Star Inn, he’s enrolled at California Virtual Academy — a tuition-free online public charter school. It’s a mix of home schooling and one-on-one lessons with a teacher.

Karen says that with Ian’s behavioral problems, that’s exactly what he needs.

“We just got his shipment actually of all of his books and stuff for this year. And they’re real supportive of what we’re going through,” she says. “His teacher is awesome.”

Karen says while they may be “technically homeless,” she strives to create a stable environment for Ian. But it’s “gone crazy” since her husband left, she says.

She hopes for a permanent place someday, with a room for Ian — his own private space. “He saw way too much in the last few weeks,” she says.

Meanwhile, she tries to protect him by keeping him inside the motel room, which holds two beds, a desk, a TV and a makeshift kitchen — just a toaster oven on top of a minifridge. They go to the park, too. But this place is not a home.

And they have no idea when they might finally get a real one.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.