THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994 TAG: 9406200041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940620 LENGTH: SUFFOLK
Even today, you can still drive down Cedar Street, take the curve to South Main and find yourself on the old track's home stretch.
{REST} Hall Place now finds itself on its own final lap. And the outcome of this community's race against time could go either way.
This neighborhood, once the bastion of Suffolk's white and affluent, has shifted from white to black, from richer to poorer, from homeowner to renter, from neighborly to distrustful.
Few residents are blaming the most pervasive problems - absentee landlords, inadequate housing and encroaching poverty. Instead, some white residents blame black residents for the neighborhood's decline.
The change is subtle. Mothers still read to their daughters on porch swings. Passing cars honk hello. If Norman Rockwell were still around, he could find a picture here.
But just down the block, residents sit on their porches listening to music pumping from car stereos. Next to one manicured yard stands a vacant home, its 3-foot-high weeds mocking its neighbor. Residents planting flowers by curbsides recently found small plastic bags used to sell crack cocaine. Police cruisers have become commonplace.
In many ways, Hall Place has become a combination of inner city and small town. And like many communities throughout Hampton Roads, Hall Place residents are split over what the future holds.
Ask Annie Haskins, 72, who has lived in Hall Place since she was 3 1/2 but doesn't see herself there much longer. ``I thought I was going to live and die here,'' she said. ``I'm still living, but I'm dead in spirit about this street.''
Ask Viola Rollings, a 74-year-old known locally as The Clipboard Lady, who said she's going ``to aggravate everyone to death.''
``I'm not going to let people run me away,'' she said.
And ask the Rev. Cecil B. Deel, a past president of the local community association.
``There's an old saying,'' he said, ``that for evil to prevail, all it takes is for good people to do nothing.''
Things have become so dire that residents anxiously look towards the city-sponsored affordable housing program to, in their words, ``save us.''
The initiative, the first of its kind for Suffolk, will rank neighborhoods by need as well as community organization and cohesiveness. The city would then infuse those neighborhoods with grant money and other assistance.
``I just don't think that an opportunity like this comes around very often,'' said Wendy G. Hill, president of the Hall Place Community Association. ``I feel like we don't have five years because we're teetering right now. We don't have time to wait . . . There are just a few things that, if we could get something done about them, it would make all the difference to us.''
The U.S. Census tells the tale of change in Hall Place.
The census locates Hall Place in tract 654, an area that includes the predominately black and poor neighborhoods of South Suffolk, Tynes Park and Saratoga.
The number of white residents in this tract has dropped from 888 in 1980 to 642 in 1990 while black residents have jumped from 2,871 in 1980 to 3,346 in 1990.
As homeowners have left or died, rental properties and absentee landlords have flourished. In 1980, there were 707 rental units in the area. Ten years later, there were 954.
The number of vacant houses has risen from 85 in 1980 to 209 in 1990. Thirteen homes were listed as ``boarded up'' in 1980. Ten years later, boards covered the windows of 31.
The battle against the blight begins at the monthly meetings of the Hall Place Community Association, where attendance is sometimes sparse. Of the 1,000 people in the 300 homes in Hall Place, about 65 residents registered to be members of the association this year. A recent meeting drew 31 residents, black and white, to the tiny Church of God.
Bad news dominated.
Residents complained about noise, traffic, urinating in front yards, firecrackers, gunshots, drinking, and even sex on the street. They were frustrated. They wanted something done. But without names, without conclusive proof, without the help of residents, the police could do little.
Towards the end of the meeting, residents told a police officer about a longtime homeowner who would spend his days sitting in a chair on his front lawn. But after too much noise, too much change, the man moved.
``You're absolutely right,'' responded the officer. ``You don't want to lose your homeowners because that's where your strength lies.''
Hall Place is slowly losing Annie Haskins, a 72-year-old white homeowner.
The intricate trellis in her backyard is chipping badly. The front stoop of her two-story home is sinking. Her chimney is crumbling. Haskins doesn't plan to fix a thing.
``There's no more interest in Hall Place than in a flea,'' she said. ``And if I spent the money to fix this, I won't get that money back if I sell my house and go somewhere else.
``I'd be satisfied here if I felt secure,'' she said, ``but I don't feel secure.''
She no longer walks around the ``race track,'' fearing the neighborhood she still loves.
Haskins' car sits in her driveway with a steering-wheel lock firmly in place. She locks her porch screen door with two hooks and dead-bolts her home's front door, even when she's inside.
The Window Ladies know when Haskins' car is in the drive. The Window Ladies are the eyes of Hall Place.
Down South Main Street - past ``Keep Off The Grass'' signs, plastic swan planters and tinkling wind chimes - you can see these white women sitting on porch swings and screened-in patios. They know all about the neighborhood and don't like the changes they have seen.
If the Window Ladies had a queen, she would be Opal Sadler.
She is 79 and suffers with emphysema. She spends her days alone, watching Hall Place from her screened porch, nourished by soda and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Though Sadler calls out from her porch to people she knows, she lacks the strength to walk around the neighborhood. Even if she could, she said, she wouldn't. She has lived here 22 years. She no longer knows or trusts most of her neighbors.
In the old days, Sadler said, ``It was very quiet and everybody was friendly to each other. No kidding . . . I would go to bed at night and leave the door unlocked. It used to be very good. But now it's not like it used to be.''
It used to be that local children knew every pear and peach tree in this neighborhood then surrounded by woods. A man nicknamed Uncle Bland made sure they safely crossed the railroad tracks. Parents scared them into coming home by threatening to unleash a local boogeyman named Red-Headed Bloody Bones.
Around the corner from Sadler's porch, George sits on an open porch watching a thunderstorm roll into Suffolk.
George, who is black and did not want his full name used, has lived here ``off and on'' for two years, he said. He hopes to live here longer. For George, this community is a sanctuary. ``It's all right to me,'' he said.
He lives on the first floor of a rented two-story home with six adults and five children. He came here from the Suffolk projects at Parker Riddick Village, where gunfire kept him cloistered and fearful.
``Every night you can hear shooting over there,'' he said. ``I just wasn't with that. It seems like I can relax my brain, and I don't have to deal with any of that here.''
Hall Place is a world away for George. ``It's like Heaven here,'' he said. ``As long as the house is here, I'll be here. As long as it don't fall down, I ain't planning to leave anytime soon.''
Across the street, Dolores Scott remembers the days when she could not walk the streets of Hall Place. Not because of the crime, but because she is black.
``You couldn't come through here,'' she said. ``We had separate parks. And if we went to their park, we had to fight. So it has come a long way.''
Her mother worked at Planters. And when she and her friends would walk to the factory to pick her up, they were told never to go any further than Hall Avenue, the northern boundary of Hall Place.
``There was definitely a certain line we couldn't cross,'' she said.
Now, Scott is a 38-year-old single mother with two children. She came to Hall Place one year ago to escape the crime, drugs and shooting in Saratoga. She is now thinking about buying a home. ``And if I could buy one in this neighborhood,'' she said, ``I would stay.''
Wendy G. Hill, 29, takes one step forward and two steps back while attempting to keep Hall Place intact.
Hill, who is white, arrived here four years ago from a nondescript townhouse in Virginia Beach, where her neighbors were a mystery.
``I never knew who any of them were,'' she said. ``And I didn't like that.''
So she plunked $64,900 down on a 2,200-square-foot home with a two-car garage and a 100-by-130-foot lot on South Main Street in Hall Place. ``I think I got a deal,'' she said.
Since then, Hill has been elected president of the Hall Place Community Association and has struggled to keep the neighborhood organized and cohesive. She is a dynamic woman with a huge energy reserve. But despite her drive, Hill still struggles to keep residents interested in their future.
``Every so often, I kinda get down, mainly because of the other people,'' Hill said. ``They've given up.''
Some hope can still be found in Hall Place. Just ask Rollings, The Clipboard Lady.
Got an abandoned car in your driveway? Rollings will write you up. Grass too long? Cut it before she comes along. House needs to be painted? Paint it. The Clipboard Lady could be watching.
During daily walks around the neighborhood, Rollings carries a clipboard and a stack of city complaint forms. She diligently fills them out.
She plans to paint her home this summer. She still walks around the neighborhood. She listens to a police scanner almost every night. And when told of a man urinating in his back yard, she said: ``I would get a camera and take his picture.''
Hill said there is also a glimmer of hope in the idle threats people make about moving from Hall Place.
``If I had a nickel for every time someone said they were selling,'' said Hill. ``They never do. You expect to see a `For Sale' sign in front of their home. But it's never there.
``People are hanging in there,'' she said. ``There's a little bit to hold on to here.''
{KEYWORDS} HOUSING NEIGHBORHOOD
by CNB