Housing GSO: HRA Greensboro Affordable Housing Plan

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY

NOTES | Community Engagement Meetings

October 15, 2019 Meeting with Goldie Wells, City Council District 2

• Has been advocating for repair of boarded-up homes in District 2 for years • Prioritization of focus areas: o Neighborhood Revitalization o Affordable Homeownership: Important for the revitalized properties to become owner-occupied properties, wants to see majority of rehab efforts go towards homeownership o Affordable Rental Housing o Supportive Housing • Major problem with code enforcement: not enough staff capacity o Her idea would be to hire retirees that could go through the neighborhood identifying properties and cleaning up some of the blight o Consistent issue with residents: they call to report things, but regular citizens don’t actually get anything to happen/peopl e to come out o Wants to strengthen connections between rehab programs and code enforcement • Identified Neighborhoods for Revitalization: o Kings Forest: She lives in Kings Forest —moved there because that’s where black middle class lived pre - integration, but she’s con cerned about the homeowners who died and have left their homes to kids who now rent them out as Section 8 tenants o Hears concerns from people about gentrification —thoughts that if people come in/build anything, it’s going to lead to displaceme nt. However, this is not her understanding of the case —it’ll be important to move this forward intentionally • Affordable Homeownership and DPA program: surprised to know about the higher-income shift in DPA o Thinks a huge part of the problem is educational knowledge about buying, knowing how to navigate loans, and direction of where you’re buying a house/lending discrimination o Wants us to be more direct about barriers to homeownership (geographic and racial biases) o Thoughts on new mortgage product: agrees that Self-Help could be a good partner (they did Revolution Mill and an East Greensboro shopping center through their Ventures Program) • What about implementation and consensus building? o Council’s buy - in and NDD’s buy -in o Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro’s support o Would also be useful to get the realtors and builders to see the vision here • Ending Thoughts o Wants all of the councilmembers to prioritize, but she thinks they will agree about neighborhood revitalization ▪ Has thought we should target specific areas for a while o Was really interested in finding best practices with Center for Community Progress o Rehab work can help with economic development, workforce training/more local jobs, and capacity building for minority contractors

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