|
Grassroots spirit strives to save blighted neighborhoods
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
At Metanoia, a faith-based, nonprofit community organization in North Charleston’s Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood near the former Navy base, children run a “store” where items such as coloring books, sneakers and toys can be “purchased” with “meta bucks,” or “metas” for short. Kids can get two books for five metas.
The point of the make-believe store is to teach children, first- to seventh-graders, the value of money and the rudiments of running a business, said the Rev. Bill Stanfield, Metanoia’s CEO.
These are crucial lessons to the children, nearly all of whom live below the poverty line, Stanfield said.
The neighborhood extends from McMillan Avenue down to Clements Avenue and from the Meeting Street Extension over to Spruill Avenue. Many of the houses are rundown. Businesses, especially along Spruill, are small, few and as dilapidated as the homes.
Housed in St. Matthew Baptist Church, Metanoia, which began in 2002, is trying to revitalize Chicora-Cherokee by instilling in the children self-confidence, a sense of self-worth, leadership qualities and a desire to achieve academically; by encouraging adults to get more involved with community affairs and their children’s education; and by providing homeownership opportunities. The intention is to have residents take the lead in improving their community, to start businesses and buy homes there and to spend their money in the community to give it a strong, economic backbone, Stanfield said.
Metanoia after-school programs and study sessions helped turn Chicora Elementary School from a failing school four years ago to a National School Change Award winner in 2006. The school was one of six U.S. public schools to win the Fordham University honor and the first South Carolina school to win it, said Camille Lee, Chicora Elementary School principal.
On the housing side, Metanoia, fueled by funds from the city, the state and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, renovates rundown homes for prospective homebuyers.
The community of 3,500 residents has only a 24% homeownership rate, the lowest in Charleston County. Since the homeownership program began two years ago, Metanoia has rehabilitated six abandoned homes, five of them purchased by first-time homebuyers. The rehab homes are priced in the mid-$90,000s. Homebuyers received $20,000 of down payment assistance. Five new homes will be built over the next year, and Metanoia is ready to begin construction on two of those. The newly built homes will sell in the $120,000s, with homebuyers receiving $40,000 in down payment assistance, Stanfield said.
Metanoia, which operates on an annual $300,000 budget, is a community development corporation.
“Community development corporations are seen as a mechanism to attract resources into target areas,” said Bernie Mazyck, president and CEO of the S.C. Association of Community Development Corporations.
Some of the resources CDCs attract include state tax dollars through appropriations from the state Legislature, low-income housing tax credits, housing trust fund dollars and federal home loan bank arrangements, in which a CDC teams with a participating local bank. These resources help encourage affordable housing and provide CDCs with programs offering down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers, Mazyck said.
Different CDCs have different purposes. Some focus on homeownership, others on creating and attracting businesses to the community, while others do a combination of both, Mazyck said.
Metanoia is one of several local grassroots organizations devoted to urban revitalization.
Like Metanoia, the Trinitas Foundation on upper King Street is a faith-based organization. Started in 2003 by the Rev. Herman Robinson, it is a subsidiary of the Charleston Trinity Baptist Church, where the foundation and its Lilies of the Field Learning and Resource Center are housed.
Lilies of the Field offers neighborhood residents after-school programs, youth clubs, family emergency assistance, credit and personal finances counseling and homeownership education. Computer labs are available. The center plans to offer job-skills training and to teach neighborhood residents how to start and maintain a business.
Even though North Charleston’s Trident One-Stop Career Center already offers some job-training programs similar to what the Lilies of the Field Resource Center plans to offer, Trident One-Stop is too far away for the neighborhood residents Lilies of the Field serves, many of whom lack transportation, Robinson said.
Trinitas serves the north-central portion of the Charleston peninsula, from Congress Street on the south to Mount Pleasant Street on the north, and from Rutledge Avenue on the west to the eastern railroad tracks near Morrison Drive.
Drugs, crime and loitering among young people plague the neighborhood. The Lilies of the Field Resource Center helps turn lives around by giving people hope, direction and constructive pursuits, Robinson said.
“We address practical and spiritual needs,” he added.
The building at 977 King St. housing Lilies of the Field, Charleston Trinity Baptist Church and the Trinitas Foundation was once a termite-ridden structure on the verge of crumbling. How that building became what it is today is an accomplishment Robinson attributes largely to donors and volunteers throughout the Charleston area.
Heidi Ravenel introduced husband Arthur Ravenel III, president of Charleston-based real estate firm the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Co., to Robinson, and Ravenel helped Robinson’s church buy the $120,000 dilapidated property.
To construct a new building, the church raised nearly $253,000 in cash donations and in-kind services from building and trades professionals. Architects, engineers, sheet-rock installers and other designers and builders donated their services for free. Robinson estimates that nearly 150 volunteers and donors were involved with the construction of the 3,600-square-foot building.
Since opening in January, Lilies of the Field has seen its community impact grow from about 15 neighborhood residents visiting the facility each week to 150 residents a week who either use the center or simply stop by to check it out, telephone the center for help or advice or meet with the church congregation, Robinson said.
“People flock here to see what’s going on,” said Nadine Sharpe, a Lilies of the Field volunteer worker.
Gary and Clara Lesesne see a couple of blocks of Spruill Avenue in lower Chicora-Cherokee as a future health care hub. Seven years ago, the Lesesnes founded People Advocating to Change Humanity, or PATCH, a nonprofit organization providing job-training programs for neighborhood residents and care for the elderly and the disabled.
PATCH headquarters is located in a small plaza Gary Lesesne built on the corner of Spruill Avenue and Norwood Street. It is there that PATCH, with help from the Trident One-Stop Career Center and the Department of Social Services, offers a certified nurses aid training program that prepares participants to apply for state board certification, the gateway to a nursing career. Twenty-three people have completed the program since it began in January.
Gary Lesesne hopes some of those future nurses will work at the Evergreen Residential Care facility, a home for the elderly and disabled Lesesne built directly across from PATCH.
Lesesne’s vision does not stop there. His sights are set on building diagonally across from PATCH another small plaza housing more health care training programs. Across the street from this would be a 14,000-square-foot medical center housing doctors’ offices. He is considering expanding the Evergreen facility and adding an extension to another residential care building he hopes to purchase about a block away from PATCH.
Lesesne made his money in the construction industry, and what he has built on Spruill Avenue he has done with his own finances. Although he prefers not to disclose how much he has invested in his vision, he believes helping improve the impoverished neighborhood is well worth the expense.
“I hope to be planting a seed,” he said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version