Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 22, 1990 TAG: 9004200403
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SCOT HOFFMAN CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: PEMBROKE LENGTH: Long
But these luxuries were never meant for students.
Built in the 1920s, Pembroke School closed 30 years ago when the town consolidated its school system with those of Giles County's other municipalities into a county system.
The building, renovated in 1987 when Virginia Mountain Housing undertook an $800,000 project to convert it into affordable housing for elderly people, is now home to one handicapped and 27 elderly Giles residents. Its name has been changed to S.A. Robinson Apartments, in honor of the school's longtime principal.
On U.S. 460 on the eastern edge of Pembroke, it is hard to tell from the outside what's within.
The weathered brick facade with "Pembroke School" still etched into the front belies a bright, clean - almost antiseptic - interior where solid oak handrails adorn newly painted walls. A bright purple, wrought-iron chandelier - donated by a local artisan - hangs above a neatly kept commons area.
For many, the building means well-deserved comfort after a life of hardships. It's even the first time that some of the residents have had running water or electricity.
"I didn't have things so comfortable before I came here," said Sippie Hutchison, 84, of Pembroke, who came to the facility in 1987, a year after her husband died. She talks about carrying buckets of water outside to do laundry in her hand-cranked washer and of lugging garbage bags to the curbside herself.
Now she uses one of three laundry rooms in the building, and a full-time maintenance man picks up garbage from the apartments.
For some residents, the apartments serve as a social atmosphere that they lacked before.
"I was alone. I had a five-room house, but I couldn't take care of it," said Joanna Myers of Hoges Chapel outside Pembroke. "The others are so nice and friendly. . . . We play shuffleboard or do a puzzle or make a dinner."
Myers, 66, moved into the apartments three years ago at her daughter's suggestion. She had lived alone since 1967 when her husband died in a car accident.
"It's so much better than being alone," she said.
The Robinson apartments save the residents from more than physical and mental hardships.
"I couldn't pay the rent anywhere else," she added.
All the tenants are on the state and federal rental assistance program, coordinated in this area through Pembroke Management Corp.
Rent, after adjustment, ranges from $15 to $159 a month, depending on income. Without subsidized rent, residents would pay $213 for an efficiency, $268 for a one-bedroom and $308 for a two-bedroom, far too high for people whose average income is about $6,000 a year.
Most of this income is from Social Security and railroad retirement pay, said Nancy Rader, the Giles County administrative agent for the housing project and for Pembroke Mangement Corp., the county's rental assistance program.
Rader's jobs require a lot of spirit and a good deal of eclecticism, both of which she has in abundance.
"I'm part mother, part psychologist. . . . I'm a one-woman show," she said. "You have to wear all sorts of hats."
She used to work for 9th District Rep. Rick Boucher and says the familiarity she gained with state and federal housing agencies has given her an edge in doing her job well.
Long an advocate of using vacant buildings, such as the school, to create low-income housing, Rader says her apartments are "an example . . . of how you can take old buildings and make good use of them.
"I just wish we had more," added the Pearisburg resident.
Virginia Mountain Housing recently purchased a house next to the Pembroke school to convert into four apartments. They should be available this summer.
But chopping away at the region's housing shortage four apartments at a time, though better than nothing, simply will not satisfy the need, Rader said.
There are 21 people on a swelling waiting list for the Robinson apartments and turnover is extremely slow, she said. All told, only 37 people have lived in the building since it opened.
Housing officials do not look enough to renovations to solve the state's - and the nation's - chronic affordable housing problem, she said, but if they could see the success of the Robinson apartments, more such projects would be undertaken.
"It's amazing what can be done," she said.
Rader looked up at the exposed rafters of the building's unrenovated gymnasium. A cold and musty room with cracked and chipping blue-and-yellow paint, it is the only part of the building to betray its former identity. The shuffleboards on the basketball court are faded from use; an old backboard, its rim dislodged, is equally worn from disuse.
"It looks awful," she said, speculating on when the housing project would find the time and money to revitalize it. "But a lot of the residents play shuffleboard in here, and a lot of them bring their grandchildren in here to play."
The Robinson building was cited as a model for elderly care by Gov. Douglas Wilder in 1987 and 1989 when he was lieutenant governor.
Rader added that she and the housing project have their eyes on a few buildings in the county that would serve as excellent renovation sites for more housing, but she did not want to say which ones for fear of jeopardizing their chances.
Both Virginia Mountain Housing and the management corporation are funded through the Virginia Housing Development Authority, which is subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
To qualify to live in Robinson, an applicant must be elderly or disabled and have an income not exceeding $10,700. That income may be derived from social security benefits, railroad retirement compensation, the Virginia State Retirement System or the federal Supplemental Security Income program as well as interest from a savings account or certificate of deposit.
Rader attributes much of the success of the apartments to cooperation and support by Pembroke residents and businesses.
A Senior Citizens Center bus comes to the building four times a week. Meals on Wheels delivers. The Health Department makes house calls. Local merchants deliver medicine and food.
"The community people of Pembroke have been wonderful," Rader said. "Everyone is really supportive."
She said she also gets plenty of help from the residents themselves in keeping the apartments going.
"We have a kind of a buddy system," she said. "Everyone kind of checks on everyone else around here to see if they're OK."
There are three committees that organize special events. A flower committee maintains a fund for funeral flowers, and a food committee organizes periodic pot-luck dinners.
"We all work together," Rader said.
The renters here say they have nothing to complain about.
"I haven't regretted a thing about it," Myers said. "It's the best move that I ever made."
"I like it here," Hutchison said. "I plan to stay here the rest of my life."
Rader said she neither sees nor wants to see an end in sight for her work.
"I'll probably stay [director] till I'm ready to come back and live here."
Correspondent Linda Dennard contributed to this article.
by CNB