{"id":19223,"date":"2017-04-21T09:46:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=19223"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:35:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:35:54","slug":"community-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=19223","title":{"rendered":"Gaining a community\u2019s trust"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Danielle
Danielle Spurlock speaks at a neighborhood town hall meeting in east Durham on February 25, 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The revitalization of Old East Durham has resulted in a dramatic increase in property values over the last 10 years. What does this growth mean for housing affordability, equity, and environmental quality in one of North Carolina\u2019s fastest growing areas?<\/em><\/p>\n

To find out, the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning is listening (and lending resources) to long-term residents of Durham.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fruit platters, hummus and veggies, chicken wings, home-baked cookies, and large pitchers of sweet tea and lemonade cover a long table at Holton Career and Resource Center<\/a>. \u00a0It\u2019s the third Tuesday of the month, which means Communities in Partnership, a neighborhood initiative of old East Durham, is hosting their monthly potluck.<\/p>\n

Across from the table, Karla Jimenez, a graduate student from the Department of City and Regional Planning in UNC’s College of Arts & Sciences, talks with a long-term resident of east Durham. Together they examine a large map of the neighborhood, and Jimenez asks her questions about local businesses and economic opportunities in the area.<\/p>\n

The woman points to an area of Angier Road where there is a row of abandoned warehouses. \u201cThese buildings could be serving the community but they\u2019re not,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to see people walking to the bus stop in the rain with bags of groceries. They have to commute by bus to the other side of Durham just to get groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation switches to food deserts, and while Jimenez listens intently to this woman\u2019s concerns about her neighborhood, another graduate student from UNC is taking down notes from their conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a facilitator I was engaging participants\u2014I asked them what their experiences have been like, but I was essentially letting them lead the conversation,\u201d Jimenez says. \u201cWherever they wanted to take the conversation we followed, because we wanted to understand what was important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what community mapping looks like, and it\u2019s one of the ways UNC researchers hope to help some marginalized neighborhoods in east Durham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve worked with other researchers but this has been the best experience,\u201d says Camryn Smith, one of the founders of Communities in Partnership. \u201cOftentimes researchers come in and research us to death and give nothing to the community in return. Having researchers like them who understand racism, inequality, and privilege is really important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The changes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Durham County gained over 44,000 new residents between 2000 and 2010. In the past six years, the county has gained another 36,000 people\u2014meaning the population has grown almost as much in the first half of this decade as it did in the previous 10 years. Durham will likely gain another 53,000 residents by 2020, according to Rebecca Tippett, director of Carolina Demography<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s a growth rate of 19.5 percent,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s much faster than the national average, and we anticipate that growth continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to look at demographic charts to see the increase in population and development, though. Danielle Spurlock, a researcher in the Department of City and Regional Planning, started noticing it while driving to church. \u201cI used to go to church in northeast Durham, so I had been driving that corridor across Alston for a fairly long time,\u201d she says. \u201cI started to see more and more houses being purchased and renovated. Now you can just count the number of porter johns up and down the street\u2014there is so much housing under construction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those construction projects result in higher property values. When the homes are renovated, new trees are planted, which has been deemed \u201cgreen gentrification,\u201d according to Spurlock. \u201cOnce you see green projects going in, it\u2019s associated with gentrification as well,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

To help combat gentrification and the myriad of complex issues associated with it, Spurlock and her colleagues\u2014Kay Jowers at the Duke Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Deborah Gallagher from the Duke Nicholas School for the Environment, and Kofi Boone from NC State\u2014applied for and received a grant from the Kenan Creative Collaboratory. Then, they started meeting with long-term residents of old East Durham. \u201cWe were asking for a community\u2019s trust,\u201d Spurlock says. Because their funding came from a foundation, it would allow them to pay for costs associated with neighborhood town hall meetings, like childcare and food\u2014things that state funds often can\u2019t cover. \u201cThose basic things are incredibly important in community spaces where you\u2019re trying to get people to come together and talk about some very hard issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The small team of university researchers established a relationship with Communities in Partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much of the development that\u2019s going is not benefitting black and brown people,\u201d says Smith, who bought a house in old east Durham in 2010. In their attempts to elevate voices from their neighborhood through Communities in Partnership, she says they\u2019ve run into problems with the mayor. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to hear our stories\u2014he says he wants to see numbers. But behind those numbers are people\u2019s lived experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is Spurlock\u2019s goal\u2014to show the numbers within the context of real everyday life for these residents.<\/p>\n

The numbers \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In east Durham, the price per square footage has increased by 32 percent. Much of that can be attributed to massive foreclosures during the Great Recession, according to Spurlock. \u201cThere are many people who see east Durham and its proximity to downtown as this investment possibility, and they have the resources to buy the homes cheaply,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cIn many cases, you can\u2019t get a loan for a house that\u2019s on the market for $50,000 or $60,000, which presupposes a certain level of economic privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Driver Road, just down the street from the Horton Career and Resource Center, sits a block of housing units with three bedrooms. One resident told Spurlock: \u201cI looked at that and thought about how we could make a three-bedroom work for our family\u2014and then I saw the price.\u201d These units used to be affordable\u2014around $600 a month. Now they are $1,600.<\/p>\n

The term \u201curban renewal\u201d has many negative connotations associated with it. \u201cRevitalization\u201d has become a more frequently used phrase in recent years, but the same problems persist. \u201cIt\u2019s not that people don\u2019t want revitalization to happen,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cBut when that means they can no longer live in the place where they\u2019ve always lived and paid taxes and contributed\u2014that seems unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith says having the right kind of university folks involved is crucial. \u201cAll of these folks are very community oriented,\u201d she says. \u201cThey really listen to us. They readily acknowledge that we\u2019re the experts on our community, but that we need help with infrastructure because we\u2019re a grassroots organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversations <\/strong><\/p>\n

Much of Spurlock\u2019s contribution is the ability to structure the conversation. What are the major issues? The most common responses include transportation, lack of economic opportunities, and housing affordability.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut within those issues, we want to know what is actually happening,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cWe want to provide many different ways for residents to participate\u2014having a public meeting shouldn\u2019t be the only way folks can have their voices heard. That\u2019s part of the beauty of this project.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Spurlock\u2019s community mapping, the project includes support for PhotoVoice<\/a>, organized by Deborah Gallagher at the Duke Nicholas School for Environment, and Walkshops, led by NC State\u2019s Kofi Boone.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhotoVoice is a platform for community members to share personal reflections about their neighborhood and to visually depict challenges and opportunities for change,\u201d Gallagher says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal was to physically explore the area to learn about the community\u2019s issues with transportation, housing, the environment, and the local economy,\u201d Boone says.<\/p>\n

Housing is always one of the biggest issues that comes up in neighborhood discussions. \u201cBecause housing was by far the biggest concern elicited by the survey, we asked participants to tell us the best places to see gentrification and displacement in the neighborhood. We were also interested in the locations of the best and worst affordable housing and the best-kept and most poorly kept properties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spurlock\u2019s community mapping initiative involved bringing large scale maps to neighborhood meetings. As residents perused them, her graduate students asked questions and initiated discussions to help capture the narratives of housing affordability and transportation access.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might not be putting a highway through a community or doing huge block evictions for a commercial development, but the public policies that are in place still produce those kinds of outcomes,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cIt\u2019s not as easy to identify as the scars of urban renewal, but I think it\u2019s scarring our neighborhoods in a similar way \u2013 it\u2019s just a little more difficult to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old and the new \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The research team is assisting\u00a0Communities in Partnership in developing a program to purchase properties to help keep long-term residents in their neighborhood. \u201cSome of these people have been long-term renters,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cBy making permanent affordable rental options accessible to them, they can help facilitate the changes they want to see in their community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating a better local economy\u2014one that encourages entrepreneurship\u2014is another goal. \u201cFolks who have small businesses should be able to scale them up,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cAnd people who have always wanted to start their own business should have resources and support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Respecting a community for its expertise is the key to all of this. \u201cI have a set of expertise in certain fields, but I\u2019m not an expert in the lived experience of folks day-to-day,\u201d Spurlock says. \u201cAnd that is just as valuable when it comes to making policy as the expertise I can provide when we\u2019re talking about re-zoning and building permits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many cases there has to be both. There has to be this intermingling of expertise for us to conceive of public policy that meets the needs of those who actually have to live in it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danielle Spurlock is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning in the College of Arts & Sciences. <\/em><\/p>\n

Karla Jimenez is a graduate student from the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning in the College of Arts & Sciences. <\/em><\/p>\n

Camryn Smith is a resident of old East Durham and a founding member of Communities in Partnership. <\/em><\/p>\n

Deborah Gallagher is an associate professor of the Practice of Resource and Environmental Policy at the Duke Nicholas School for the Environment. <\/em><\/p>\n

Kay Jowers is a senior policy associate in the state policy program at the Duke Nicholas Institute. <\/em><\/p>\n

Kofi Boone is an associate professor of landscape architecture at NC State\u2019s College of Design. <\/em><\/p>\n

The <\/em>Kenan Creative Collaboratory<\/em> is supported by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Funds and facilitated by the four Kenan Institutes across the state of North Carolina.<\/em><\/p>\n

Story by Mary Lide Parker, Endeavors magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The revitalization of Old East Durham has resulted in a dramatic increase in property values over the last 10 years. What does this growth mean for housing affordability, equity, and environmental quality in one of North Carolina\u2019s fastest growing 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