By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Erika White moved into Calhoun Homes, a low-income housing development in North Charleston, in October 2004. Two months later, the management notified the 19-year-old that she and her toddler daughter would have to move.

She was told Calhoun Homes would be demolished and transformed into a 44-acre, $200 million mixed-used development called Mixson Avenue, named for the thoroughfare where Calhoun Homes is located. White and the other Calhoun Homes tenants—some 240 households—were notified that they had to move by June 30.

“I was shocked,” White says. “It burdened me. Being in school and working and caring for a young child, I kept wondering when I would have the time to move on such short notice.”

Often when developers plan rejuvenation efforts in blighted areas, existing residents are displaced. Being uprooted from their homes to make way for a new housing development they cannot afford to live in is difficult for existing residents.

The Mixson Avenue development, created by the I’On Group, developers of upscale I’On Village in Mount Pleasant, and Charleston urban design firm Keane & Co., will feature a subdivision consisting of 950 residential units, including townhouses, condominiums, apartments and single-family houses. Housing prices will range from about $100,000 to $300,000—far too high for White, a stock clerk at the Target discount department store on Rivers Avenue.

Emotions run high

Feelings such as White’s were common among the Calhoun Homes residents, says Debby Waid, assistant director of the Humanities Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to affordable housing issues. ShelterNet, a branch of the Humanities Foundation, worked with tenants to help them move by providing financial assistance to those who needed it most.

“We encountered a lot of anger,” Waid says. “Some people had been living in Calhoun Homes for more than 20 years.”

ShelterNet’s Anna Hamilton met with Calhoun Homes’ tenants to gauge their financial situations. “We did income assessments to determine who were the neediest residents,” Hamilton says.

To help assist the tenants with their moving expenses, ShelterNet received about $25,000 from the I’On Group and about $15,000 from the city of North Charleston, Waid says.

In January, Calhoun Homes, in conjunction with ShelterNet and the I’On Group, held a housing fair in which tenants met with property managers and apartment landlords to find new living quarters.

White was disappointed with the housing fair. “I thought there would be people speaking to us one on one. Instead, representatives from different apartment complexes came by and passed out flyers. It was first come, first served. They didn’t try to get information from me about what I could afford and where I wanted to live in relation to my job.”

So White ended up searching on her own, driving around North Charleston and studying the classified advertisements. Finally, off Dorchester Road near Interstate 26, she found a two-bedroom house renting for $550 a month. White moved there in April. ShelterNet paid her security deposit and half of her first-month’s rent.

Is White happy to be out of Calhoun Homes? “Yes and no,” she says.

“My apartment there was nice. But it’s quieter here.” She believes her new neighborhood is safer for her two-year-old daughter.

Today, all but about 30 Calhoun Homes’ households have found a new place to live. Most of the tenants who left Calhoun Homes managed to stay in North Charleston. What remains of the development, built in 1941 by the federal government for shipyard workers and military personnel, are empty white clapboard houses, some abandoned, and the lots where such houses stood before they were demolished.

Déjà vu

Calhoun Homes proved to be a kind of déjà vu for the Humanities Foundation. In 2001, the organization helped residents of the Shoreview low-income apartment complex near the Charleston peninsula’s Wagner Terrace find new housing. Shoreview’s 112 households had to make way for commercial real estate giant The Beach Co.’s Longborough subdivision. Shoreview got demolished, and in its place now stand Lowcountry-style single family houses whose prices range from about $450,000 to $600,000.

Shoreview residents were given 120 days to find new living quarters, Waid says.

Most of Shoreview’s residents found housing in Charleston and North Charleston, says Waid. Others moved to James Island and Johns Island. One household moved to New York City.

LeGrand Elebash, president of the I’On Group, believes developers should play a role in helping displaced residents find new housing but should not be the sole bearers of that responsibility.

“It really extends beyond the developer’s role,” Elebash says. “The city should play a role, elected officials should play a role and charities should play a role. As a community, it’s in all of our best interests that people are not left behind when change occurs.”

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.

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