Steve Mensing, Editor/RFP Staff
♦ Kenneth Lydell Muhammad El, a community advocate for the disenfranchised and charter schools, warned on Change.org that the Salisbury Housing Authority is engaging in unfair housing practices threatening to displace Black families through gentrification.
Gentrification is not an unfamiliar practice in Salisbury, N.C. as anyone who drives around and observes systematic alterations in city’s neighborhoods where the “have nots” are extracted and economically segregated from the “haves” through the covert use of gentrification and “shrinking” (reducing key city services to an area as witnessed in the West End).
Kenneth Lydell Muhammad El wrote on Change.org: “The Salisbury Housing Authority is engaged in unfair housing practices which threatens to displace Black families as part of a gentrification process. Under the guise of HUD’s RAD initiatives, the Housing authority has partnered with unnamed private parties in a scheme to ensure that a majority of Black families in the Civic Public Housing site will be displaced. Tenants of the Civic site demands that HUD’s Regional and National offices launch an investigation to prevent further erosion of tenants’ rights under the Fair Housing Act.
It appears that there will be a great deal of displacement based on credit ratings. There should be an investigation into this since it seems in gross violation of the HUD rules about how long your rights continue with public housing. As HUD revamps their housing developments and begins the process of privatizing it in parts, where does that push the current residents off to? They can take their vouchers to other HUD housing. Yes, but as more and more are quasi-privatized, where will there be to go? Oh yes, to all the abandoned houses in the county.”
The Change.org Petition:
Early voices speaking out against the Salisbury Housing Authority on the Change.org petition:
William Peoples: “Salisbury Housing Authority told lies from the beginning about how displaced people would be given priority to move back in.”
Whitney Peckman: “It appears that there will be a great deal of displacement based on credit ratings. There should be an investigation into this since it seems in gross violation of the HUD rules about how long your rights continue with public housing. As HUD revamps their housing developments and begins the process of privatizing it in parts, where does that push the current residents off to? They can take their vouchers to other HUD housing. Yes, but as more and more are quasi-privatized, where will there be to go? Oh yes, to all the abandoned houses in the county.”
Tanika Leonard: “I’m signing because my 65 year old disabled mother was moved out of Civic Park apartments and promised to be placed in Brenner Crossing apartments. In August was called to fill out an application. It was only 36 families that the moved out. Why they can’t place them back in the apartments that they were promised. I’m standing for my mother Patricia Leonard.”
The new Civic Park Apartments in Salisbury’s West End
The newly redeveloped Civic Park Apartments are projected to be completed in 2016 at a site along Standish Street and Brenner Avenue in Salisbury’s West End. The project is set to be constructed in two phases–the first 80 units complex sometime this summer and a second 90 unit complex in 2016. The Salisbury Housing Authority partnered with Laurel Street Residential based in Charlotte. The site is owned by the Salisbury Housing Authority.
The coming Civic Park Apartments will provide mixed-income apartments containing from one to four bedrooms and townhouses with two to three bedrooms. In the works are a family oriented community building, playgrounds, and walking areas.
RFP Articles on Gentrification and Planned Shrinkage
http://rowanfreepress.com/2012/11/22/gentrify-this-the-dark-side-of-gentrification/
An Article on HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (R.A.D.):
http://www.enterprisecommunity.com/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=00Pa000000JUpKpEAL
