INDY ARTICLE ABOUT GREENBRIDGE

As I was going around talking to residents about this issue, so, it seems was Joe Schwartz, staff writer at the Triangle's Independent newspaper. Last week's cover story highlighted the controversy around Greenbridge. He did a good job of gathering the range of opinions, although I was disappointed by the way he presented Tim Toben's comments as fact and the comments of community activists and citizens as opinion. Could have been a little more investigation into the claims of Toben. Also, he might have better highlighted the vibrant community that remains in the neighborhood and spent a little more time reporting on some of the proactive efforts at community preservation currently in place through EmPOWERment, St. Joseph, Hargraves, the Jackson Center, etc. Might have thought about not starting with the somewhat glorified story of Greenbridge's inception, as well. Just some thoughts, though.

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/greenbridge-a-new-chapter-in-a-tense-history/Content?oid=1484113


Check out this slideshow as well!

Greenbridge: A new chapter in a tense history from Independent Weekly on Vimeo.

Confusion confusion clarity confusion interviews confusion interviews confusion synthesis

I don't even know where to begin. I have worked myself up into a frenzy trying to wrap my mind around everything from economic theory of rent gaps to the stories of family drama to property taxes to zoning to affordable housing to poverty to the stubborn ills of capitalism. The other night when I could not sleep because of the heat in my un-airconditioned room, I was kept in a torturous and delirious half dream of gentrification economics equations over and over.
But things have calmed down up there--a little bit at least : )

So what have I been up to? Well, I started the research project by listening to recorded interviews, oral histories, and community meetings. Through these I gained a patchwork understanding of the Northside and a sense of the political climate and pervading opinions surrounding the issue of neighborhood change. I have been slowly plodding through a textbook on gentrification and have met and spoken with various community organizers, town policy reform groups, and community leaders to inform them of this project. I have interviewed a variety of residents who have shared with me the stories of Northside properties and the ways in which they have changed hands. I created my own (private) google map, on which I have plotted these stories in rough form.

I wish I could tell about my interviews specifically. About the moments I have had with Northside residents in sweaty back trailers and cluttered living rooms, watching the end of one particularly gripping news story on television before I was allowed to begin the interview. But I am nervous to break confidentiality, so I will instead fill this entry with the more academic thoughts (of which there are MANY) that have been causing such a ruckus inside my brain.

DISCOVERIES

Through talking with residents, I have gotten the sense that most of the instances in which property ownership has transitioned out of the hands of longtime Northside residents resulted from homeowners passing away and leaving their property to their children, who then decided to sell for various reasons (most often to developers). The factors that have been cited so far in interviews are:

• Children of previous residents no longer live in the neighborhood and do not believe they can handle property upkeep from a distance (connected to this have been suggestions that Chapel Hill does not offer enough jobs for children who grew up in the neighborhood to return after leaving)
  
• Property taxes are such that renting becomes no longer financially sensible
  
• Feuding between children for ownership of property. (My understanding is that in cases such as this, it is easier to just sell the property and split up the money)
• One interviewee suggested that people are simply "not using their heads" and prefer the instant gratification of selling a house and receiving a lump sum over the long-term investment of keeping the property and renting it out.
  
• Properties are old and the upkeep is daunting for children

However, there are a number of variations on this process that I have come upon:

• Not all children sell their houses when their parents pass away; there are some children that have remained in the neighborhood as homeowners (I spoke with one such resident who moved back to the neighborhood from DC after her mother passed away. She, however, reports that if property taxes continue to rise, she may be forced to sell.)
  
• Children do not always sell to developers, but sometimes will themselves rent to students (begging the theoretical question of is this different? Is it still gentrification?)
  
• Occasionally people will sell their house to other long-time residents and homeowners within the community (who often then rent to students)
  
• Apparent in certain anecdotes is the process of elderly homeowners themselves selling their properties before entering a rest home.
  
• I also spoke with one elderly resident who decided to sell her property after her husband died and she could no longer afford property taxes.

**The problem with much of this information is that none of it has come directly from the horse's mouth. That is to say, elderly community residents have recounted their theories and stories to me, but I have not yet been able to speak with any of the children--any of the people who have actually sold the properties. (The only anecdote that has come specifically from the seller is the last one--the elderly lady who sold her property after her husband died for the stated reason of property taxes). Ideally the next step would be to speak directly to those who have actually sold the properties, but it has been impossible to track down any contact information for any of them. This has been one of my biggest struggles in conducting my research (as I anticipated it would be).


QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS

Within the broader question of "HOW has the change in property ownership in the Northside occurred?" and even more broadly, "Why are African Americans and low-to-middle-income families losing valuable real estate in Chapel Hill?" there are MANY many many many sub-questions (as I'm sure we have all discovered in our research projects).

As you all know, the question I initially set out to investigate was WHY are people selling their houses, and in the process have also stumbled also upon answers to the question of WHO is selling the properties (mostly the children although there are exceptions). I feel successful in that I have a general sense of the various reasons that traditional homeowners have sold their houses. Although I have not gathered enough data to answer this question in a particularly concrete or methodologically sound manner, I have nonetheless gained enough of a sense of the situation that I could provide a relatively informed account, as I did above.

Meanwhile, I have run into other, perhaps better questions still unanswered, particularly:
WHO have people sold to, and especially, WHY have they sold to who they have sold to?

Regarding WHO people have sold to, I get the impression that in recent years it has been majority developers, although I would certainly need better evidence to substantiate that assertion.

But the (arguably) most important question of WHY people have sold to who they have sold to is the one that has left me to wonder more than any of the others, and also that which I know least how to answer.

For example, do sellers care who gets the property after them, or are they simply selling to the highest bidder (keeping in mind, of course, that each instance is case-specific). Is there just a higher demand from students (and thus developers)? Is there even a demand from other residents of the neighborhood for these properties, or from other low-to-middle-income families, especially African American families? That is to say, would such populations want to live in the Northside if they could afford to (of course this is highly speculative)?

If so, what is preventing these population from acquiring properties in the Northside? Is it mostly the fact that these populations can no longer afford to purchase properties in the Northside, given rising land values, or are there certain individuals or families that would be able to afford to live there, but nonetheless get outbid by developers? Are the properties not being sufficiently advertised to certain populations? Do developers contact sellers before anyone else has an opportunity to bid for the property? etc etc.

If not, why not? Is it because the neighborhood is simply not appealing anymore? Is it because the neighborhood seems unwelcoming now due to the high population of students? Is it indicative of a demographic shift in the greater metropolitan area? Is it because there are no suitable jobs in the area?

**Once again, the problem with these questions is that many of them are speculative, and the ones that are not require me to interview people who have already left the neighborhood and ask them highly personal questions. Thus far no one that I have talked with has been able to give me contact information for any of the children of previous residents who have sold properties. It is still a possibility that I will be able to use land records to track people down, but I dread this for various reasons (1. it will be extremely tedious to pore through records. 2. There is no guarantee that the information provided will be up-to-date. 3. I will have no way to establish rapport with these individuals before questioning them).


AUXILLARY RESEARCH

Policy Research- I have much work to do in this area, and should begin devoting more time to this type of research. (I know this does not mean that I will be sticking to one research question, but the issue is so broad, that I feel like I will fail if I do not look at it holistically)

• How are property taxes calculated?
• What are the options for property tax/rent relief?
• How does zoning fit into the whole process?
• How much affordable housing is in the Northside currently

BROADER VISION FOR THIS RESEARCH

The most challenging part of this project has been trying to wrap my mind around where my research is situated in the broader issues of the Northside and the town of Chapel Hill, and what proactive community-building/legal/town policy recommendations and plans of action might emerge from the work I am doing this summer. Something I'm sure I share with all of us CBRers is that we are not doing this research for the sake of doing research, but rather to get to the heart of a core issue that concerns us such that our research may be used in the process of formulating and/or implementing solutions in the future.

I know it is always unwise to demand solutions too soon--before we are fully informed, and I know that for the purpose of this project, I am a researcher and not an activist. But the fact is that I am an activist. That's really why I decided to take on this research, and so I could not help but feel a certain despondency in recent weeks at finding myself suddenly without even the small flicker of potential solutions. I'm not sure why exactly it was that I hit such a point of confusion, and yet sometime during the previous week, I lost the vision--at least temporarily. This project, from the outset, was formulated to challenge the claim of "inevitability"--the claim that it has been market forces alone responsible for the drastic changes in the Northside. It is easier to fight the claim that gentrification is inevitable in cases where residents are being visibly and actively forced out or barred from a community against their will. When residents are evicted from their homes because they cannot afford to pay rising property taxes or rising rents, and say "we want to live here but can not." That is a market force, perhaps, but the entire point of policy is to override inevitable forces, and rent control does exist, as do certain caps, waivers, and mechanisms of property tax relief.
But what happens when residents are choosing to sell their homes? This is certainly not to suggest that there are no systematic forces at work that put them in the position of making that choice--that the lack of jobs in Chapel Hill, and that rising property taxes caused by nearby elite developments have not had a hand in the process. Perhaps these forces are even actively discriminatory (I can not say), but they are nonetheless subtler and as such, it is very difficult to know how to confront them. There gets to a point where I suddenly find myself confronting, not just town policy, but the culture of American individualism and the very assumption that housing should be based on a capitalist system. But where does that get me? So after a sighing, hair-pulling afternoon, I started to ask myself 'what are the realms in which these issues could be categorized to better understand what the specific issues are and how they may or may not be confronted.' I thought a lot about this and came up with three "issue realms" (gosh I feel like such a dork sometimes):

1. The future of the neighborhood one generation from now- I think it is important to face the fact that this is the most difficult realm to predict or have a hand in changing. (That is to say, although many people would hate to see the Northside lose its identity as an African American home-ownership community, we cannot exactly recruit other black families to come here. That would be strange for many many reasons). But at the same time, it is important to ask the difficult questions. What will happen as more and more houses are bought by developers (as is still happening at a rapid rate) and more and more students move in? What will happen to St. Joseph and Hargraves? Will people still commute in from surrounding communities to attend church here? On the other hand, perhaps some properties will still remain in families for generations to come, and the community will remain mixed and diverse as it is now with a range of residents from students to long-time Northside families. After all, there remain more traditional residents in the Northside than I think is commonly realized. Furthermore, the Center for Saving and Making History at St. Joseph is an incredible resource and could focus efforts on publicizing and producing outreach materials to the town (even to Greenbridge) and to the community (as well as for residents who have left the neighborhood to be able to hold on to a piece of it--such as a CD of neighborhood elders recounting oral histories, to name one brainstorm).
   
2. The future of demographics and social stratification in Chapel Hill one generation from now: Doing this research and looking at the direction that Chapel Hill is headed in terms of town development policy has raised fears that the majority of available housing will cater to individuals and families in higher income brackets, that culturally the town businesses and entertainment will reflect middle-to-upper class elite tastes, that service workers to the university and hospital will have to migrate into the town from surrounding areas, and those low-income individuals that do remain in the city will be relegated to public housing. Combating this could include pushing for an expanded affordable housing program (especially as the town gets wealthier from wealthier inhabitants and can afford to spend more on social programs). The town might benefit by asking the various cultural populations of Chapel Hill what amenities, stores, and services they would like to see offered or developed. The town might think about subsidizing some aspect of small-businesses if they are having difficulty staying afloat.
   
3. Current issues that current Northside residents face: Rising property taxes, rude and insensitive behavior of (some) student neighbors, lack of investment in community infrastructure while meanwhile there is huge investment in elite developments next door. But caps on property taxes are not unheard of. The town might agree to lessen the tax burden on families who have been in the neighborhood for multiple generations, or who are of a lower income level. The Good Neighbor Initiative might expand to include some of the oral history work. The community might push the town to invest more in Hargraves, Baldwin park, and the public housing units in the Northside (not to mention more affordable housing as suggested above). The town might do better to enforce the Neighborhood Conservation District regulations so that developers are not breaking code to build on more axillary structures.
   

These are just ideas. And ultimately it won't all come from me. But for now I can brainstorm.

ALL this is to say, I'm feeling a little more clarity than I did last week (when I was still rolling around pathetically in my despair of capitalism) and am eager to finally get a hold of the land records tomorrow (this has been a long time coming) so that I may begin to contact previous homeowners.

PS-if you managed to read all of this, let me know and I will cook you dinner!...Seriously, though. : )