"Neighbor"hoods - The People Next Door

This weekend, the Weiss Fellows explored a part of our little town that was new to all but one of us: the Northside neighborhood. In the preparation and brainstorming phases for an upcoming Weiss project that I’m sure we’ll read about on these pages throughout the semester, we decided that we ought to get out into the community that we had begun to talk about. Orange County is notorious, it seems, for its high housing prices and generally high cost of living, although offset somewhat by a pretty stable housing market (when that’s certainly not the case for the majority of the US). Wandering around in this “new to me” neighborhood generally hidden from what I call the “Franklin Street Version” of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, I was struck at what seemed to be a series of neighborhoods perfectly set up for community interaction, and housing that appeared to be more affordable than many of the ritzy neighborhoods and fancy condominiums popping up in the area. I was instantly reminded of two things: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a speaker who visited us last fall: Christine Westfall of the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust.

Baton Rouge:

Although anywhere has its share character, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was (and continues to be) the most “character-riddled” place that I have ever lived. I have dream-like memories every so often of sitting on a cracked pink stucco, high-ceilinged screened-in porch in Spanishtown, leaning back in an old and creaking wicker chair, drinking a glass of wine with friends. Although humid and sticky, the porch was preferable to the indoors (no one kept air-conditioning very high), because at least the fresh air and occasional breeze offered some relief. Beads remaining from the winter’s Mardi Gras parade through that neighborhood occasionally caught a streetlight, and little creatures ran in and out of the banana trees growing in front of the porch. Neighbors – friends by proximity, really – wandered by, waving and stopping over to say hello and to shoot the breeze for a little while.

My inclination for poetics aside, this somewhat idyllic representation of the lazy evenings in Baton Rouge is relatively representative of some of the neighborhoods there. In the “old” sections of town, some of the housing “needed some love,” but several (and a growing number of) houses were undergoing a process of renovation/restoration. The “needed some love” housing was more affordable, and whether restored or not, the houses seemed to provide the structures for much more of a “neighbor”-hood than the more expensive and “suburban” subdivisions. Baton Rouge is by no means the epitome of urban dwelling, equality, livability, justice… (continue on), but one thing that some little pockets of Baton Rouge seems to have “gotten right” is the notion of a “neighbor”hood.

I’ve used this strange punctuation to put the emphasis on “neighbor” – the people living next door to you. In so many neighborhoods, “neighbors” are similar in terms of socioeconomic status – while variations in income in neighborhoods, subdivisions, and developments certainly occur, a certain “baseline” (lowest-end cost of housing in a particular area) sorts out the folks who cannot afford to buy in that housing market. Similarly, certain neighborhoods appear to have “caps” on the cost of housing, maintaining a certain degree of low-income earning folks in relatively low-cost housing. How productive is this sorting in terms of urban livability? If neighborhoods were more affordable and/or we saw more variation in the types of housing built into developments, what might happen to the strength of communities? Instead of continuing community stratification based on economics, maybe some new bonds could be created. I’m a proponent of synergy and creativity in working towards progress in our urban environments, and believe that those two things are borne of dialogue (and some healthy, constructive conflict) between different view- and stand-points. I know I’m not alone in that, and there are some people and organizations doing some really great things to turn ramblings such as mine in to urban actualities.

The Orange Community Housing and Land Trust:

Last fall, we were privileged with a visit from Christine Westfall, from the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust. Orange County has a lot to offer its residents: great schools, safe neighborhoods, public transit, etc., but the “entrance cost” of living is far too much for many to handle. The Orange Community Housing and Land Trust is a vital organization in this area to enable people who might not otherwise be able to purchase housing or property in this county to become members of the community.

After reading Marx, Henry George came up with a philosophy that the land should really belong to the community, and improvements to that land should belong to the individuals. This is the whole premise behind community land trusts - the land trust is a legal structure – a contractual system of agreements that enables folks to enter into communities and housing markets previously beyond their means. One of the appealing things about the land trust housing is that they change the concept of houses from investments to places to live – when a house becomes a dwelling place rather than an investment, the “personal” aspect of the living place comes to the forefront.

Nationally, mobility is a concern in a land trust model. Without an established network of land trusts, it becomes difficult to move between cities as is often demanded by jobs, etc. The network of land trusts is growing, however – there are approximately 170 across the country and they’re ever working to develop systems for networking and transfer. The land trust keeps the prices low, which is a good thing – oftentimes even in mixed-income neighborhoods, the success of one generation means that house prices rise so much that the next generation can’t keep the houses affordable. The land-trust model prevents the huge increases, sustaining a level of affordability not often found in the private market. While issues of growing wealth (through property values) are a concern for some, the land trust model allows people to enter into home-ownership in markets otherwise unaffordable, building equity and hopefully enabling them to eventually move into the private market. Christine noted the general success of the families in land trust housing in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, optimistic about the possibilities for community growth and strengthening.

Diversity in socioeconomics, occupation, race, color, class, creed, etc. – all make for stronger communities, but can only truly affect change and understanding when communities encourage folks of different “walks” to interact on a daily basis. "Neighbor"hoods are of the utmost importance. Wandering around the Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill, I wondered how well we all, as residents of Chapel Hill, are doing to truly connect with all the different pockets of folks that make up this town as a whole. How welcoming are we of "strangers" in our neighborhoods? Not very, it seems. What should determine whether someone is a "welcome visitor" or a "stranger" in a certain part of town? The Orange Community Housing and Land Trust is making great steps in diversifying Chapel Hill neighborhoods by enabling people otherwise prevented from home ownership in the country to enter into that realm, opening opportunities for the dialogue necessary to spark the creativity and synergy necessary to make Chapel Hill and Carrboro ever more livable and available to a greater variety of people.