Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303280052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They call themselves the Nosy Neighbors of Hunt Manor. Juanita Crews, 64, the group's chairwoman, came up with the name.
She says the name doesn't mean that neighbors snoop on each other.
"It means everyone looks out for their neighbor," Crews said. "If anybody is going through your neighbor's window and coming out with a television set, you get on the phone and call 911."
Her group is one of the official residents' councils emerging as powerful forces at Roanoke's public housing complexes.
Most of the 11 complexes had gone years without residents' councils until the city housing authority began trying to resurrect them two years ago.
Housing officials and residents hope renewed community spirit will help fight drugs, violence and despair in public housing.
Leaders of some of the residents' councils say they are encouraged by a new air of openness at the city Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The agency's longtime executive director, Herbert McBride, was fired last year after its board chairman complained that McBride was more concerned about buildings than the people who lived in them.
Resident leaders praise his replacement, Neva Smith, who took over the agency last fall. Smith said she stresses an open-door policy.
"Communication is the greatest thing in the world," Crews said. "If you don't have it, you don't have anything."
Crews and her husband, Clifton, have lived at Hunt Manor, near Interstate 581 north of downtown Roanoke, for two decades.
She knows that the simplest things can boost a community's pride - like flowers.
She's looking for someone to donate seeds so Hunt residents can spruce up their yards.
"If we could cooperate, we could have the prettiest yards," Crews said. "When people look over from 581, you'd like for them to look at something real nice, instead of looking at a lot of beer cans."
She also organized a trip in August to Kings Dominion amusement park for Hunt residents. They're raising their own money and already have a bus load signed up.
"I'm trying to insist on parents having more fun with their children and letting them know that they care," Crews said.
Getting things done
Across town in Southeast Roanoke, Lucille Huett has learned some of the same lessons as Juanita Crews.
Huett is president of Indian Rock Village Residents Council. The group has a more formal name, but it is just as active as the Hunt Manor tenants' group.
Huett and other residents have gone through leadership training classes sponsored by the housing authority and the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service.
"It's helped me a lot as far as talking in public and achieving my goals," Huett said. "I couldn't talk at all when I first started with them. But I can talk a little now."
She also can get things done.
Every Thursday afternoon, she and other residents at Indian Rock offer a program of arts, crafts and games for children ages 5 to 13. On Saturday mornings, they show cartoons at the community center. She hopes to add some educational films to slip in between the cartoons.
When she moved into the complex a little more than a year ago, "the kids threw stuff in their yards. It was junky. It was terrible."
She had her two teen-agers clean and raked the yard. Neighbors noticed. "The next day all the yards were raked and cleaned," Huett said.
Now she gets her kids to look after older residents, running to the store for them and doing other chores. "Adopt-a-grandparent, I call it."
Huett said the new activism also has reduced the tensions that sometimes boiled over between the Southeast Asian immigrants and others who share the complex.
"A year ago we didn't understand each other at all," Huett said. "It was just two different categories of people who didn't like each other. We're doing fine now. We don't have any problems."
Looking for security
Some public housing residents say one of the problems in the past has been that many people were skeptical when new programs started. They'd seen so many come in with fanfare and then fade away.
So instead of pitching in, they'd wait on the sidelines to see what would happen. That would leave things up to a handful of devoted activists - and pretty much ensure failure again as the leaders burned out from overwork.
Huett doesn't believe that will happen at Indian Rock. She said the complex has about a dozen active members, and has had as many as 17 people at meetings.
Smith, the housing agency's new director, said energetic residents are the key to bringing change to public housing.
The agency is trying to do its part.
In response to resident complaints, for example, the agency has hired security guards to protect its two high-rise apartment buildings for the elderly.
At Lincoln Terrace and Lansdowne Park housing complexes, it has set aside empty apartments as Neighborhood Action Centers. Residents' councils meet and keep office space in the centers. The Lincoln Terrace center also serves as the office for a counselor from Mental Health Services of Roanoke Valley.
Smith said the housing authority is trying to develop a tougher screening process for new tenants, partly to keep out people with serious criminal records.
In recent years, many public housing projects in the city have been dogged by murders, crack-cocaine dealing and lesser outbreaks of violence and crime.
Wednesday, a 29-year-old man was found shot to death on a street near Lansdowne Park - the fourth shooting death around the complex since 1989.
The housing authority is setting up a screening panel - two residents and three agency employees - to consider every new applicant. It will use criminal records checks, landlord references and possibly credit reports to help decide who gets in - and who doesn't.
Smith said the agency wants to "offer housing to people who are going to be good neighbors."
When you let in someone who has a criminal record, she said, "they tend to draw people from the outside who just compound the problems for the residents living there."
`More like a home'
Residents say they are pleased with the city's COPE team, a community police unit created after some public-housing residents accused the Police Department of insensitivity. The team targets problem areas and tries to build a rapport with residents.
When Hunt Manor had a community cleanup day last year, Crews said, "they were right out there with us, cleaning up, picking up. These are the kind of people we have on the COPE team."
The problem is that there is just one COPE team but 11 public housing complexes and numerous other "hot spots" where residents say they need undivided attention.
Shirley Eley, head of the residents' council at Jamestown Place in Southeast Roanoke, said one city officer spends much of his shift each day at the complex - but it's still not enough. She said Jamestown needs an even greater police presence, and it needs judges to get tough with people who violate the "no trespassing" signs at the complex.
But overall, Eley said, "things are looking better - a lot better."
Two Jamestown residents recently wrote the agency to praise the complex's manager, Steve Hayslett, for helping to change things for the better.
"It is so quiet now that everyone can get a good night's sleep," one wrote. "There are no more drug deals in the parking lot. The loud parties have stopped. There are fewer police called. It is more like a home."
by CNB