I met a neighbor last week who had to leave her home after living there for 21 years. We talked because I was trying to help her find a home for her dog. As of last week, she has had to temporarily move in with her son and could not take the dog. Her story and my inability to help her, at least a little bit by helping re-home her dog, really affected me.
This was the story she told: She lived in a Section 8 property and hers was one of 48 properties in the neighborhood owned by one man. When the 20-year agreement with HUD ended in 2002, he decided not to renew the Section 8 agreement but instead wanted to sell the properties. The neighbor should have had the right to buy her home under laws that protect tenants. What I understood from her recounting of the story is that the landlord wanted to sell all the properties en masse. His agreement with HUD was under one big mortgage for all the properties, so he argued that he could not break up the properties to sell them individually. After seven long years in court fighting for her right to buy her home, the landlord won. She fought him with a handful of other neighbors, also trying to buy their homes outright. She wasn’t exactly sure how she lost, other than being left with the impression that his lawyers were slicker than hers. But worried about he possibility of being saddled with the lawyers fees, she decided to give up the case rather than appeal.
I wanted to post this story for a few reasons:
1. ) I see our neighborhood going through changes, and the goods and bads of those changes are not always black and white.
2.) I’d also like to foster a discussion of what people want for our neighborhood. I’m going to do another post about that.
3.) I’d like to find out more about the history of this case, and wondered if anyone has any information. It seems to have affected many people in the area.
Bates Area Civic Association 
this is a sad example of how the laws that are supposed to be there to protect the little people can be gamed by those who know how to work the system. common sense tells anyone that this woman (and the other people who were looking to buy) should have been able to purchase their houses.
i hope the karma comes back to get the landlord, somehow.
Not knowing who the owner is limits answering the 3rd point.
On the 2nd there should be economic diversity in the neighborhood and there are several ways to maintain it. But we need to admit there are forces and desires to limit and eliminate parts that bring in, house, and serve lower income and fixed income persons. We should address those desires and see where income diversity can fit and what we’d like income diversity to look like and how the community as a whole can suport it.
On the first point the neighborhood has been changing since the 19th century. Several people’s alley dwellings probably got torn down to build those houses between 3rd & North Cap and Q and P in the 1900s. It’s going to change as we continue into the 21st century. The question is what are we doing as individuals and as a community as a whole to impact what that change looks like.