Southside Spotlight

It was about five years ago. I didn’t like it when bulldozers tore down the back lot, felling trees, digging up the ground to pave a parking lot. Sooner or later, the machines would come for this building—and everybody in it who had no place to go was gonna be in real bad shape. That number, of course, was all of us.

You already couldn’t swing a dead cat between 11th Avenue and Park without hitting new luxury housing. Where the hell would we go as cheap as this place?
So, for the next five years, I just kept trying not to think about it too much. Just enjoy it while it lasts. Then, in about February of 2004, I bumped into the caretaker. Turned out, the property was being sold. To Bethlehem Baptist Church (720 13th Ave. S.) next door—which had done all that tearing down to widen their parking lot. You know that feeling of having been emotionally gored? A bit later, once I could think, I figured, better to go meet bad news rather than wait around worrying how soon it’s gonna come calling. I went to the church offices and found the operations manager, a guy named David Jeager. “How soon,” I asked, “are we gonna leave our homes?”

You could’ve knocked me out with the proverbial feather when he replied, “Nobody has to go anywhere. [The church] bought that place—and the two adjacent properties—as part of plan to invest in the community. And a significant piece of that is affordable housing.”

“No sh—-.” I caught myself and then we settled into a conversation. Rather, for the next hour or so, I said things like “Far out” and “No kidding,” while he ran down how the buildings that couldn’t be salvaged would be leveled and the ones that could be (including the two buildings that had us tenants in them) would be—get this—rehabbed up to code. The slumlords who sold the place to Bethlehem Baptist didn’t fix a thing unless the city was breathing down their necks. I left there grinning all over myself.

January marked a year since BBC took title and started putting elbow grease where its mouth is, following up Jeager’s words with concrete action. It’s slow going. But, it is going. I asked Dave about the past year’s progress. “In the short run,” he says, “I’m real pleased in that during the transition time when we will need to set more firmly in concrete what he wants to do … we’ve been able to keep people in their houses and even improve them. In the long run, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been able to move the ball down the field a little quicker. And I’m going to have to hand that baton off [to a successor] as I move on to another position.” Jeager’s not one to blow his horn. But, honestly, even if the most he did was simply not mess anything up, that’s plenty when it comes to something like letting people with shallow pockets keep a roof overhead.

This outfit called Masterworks runs the place for BBC, and a fella named Kurt Swanson runs Masterworks. Swanson got in there, took a look at things and decided to salvage one of the unoccupied buildings. He, too, likes how things have gone. “Progress has been slow, but sure,” he tells me. “We’d love to have a project here that takes the needs of the community into consideration. In the short run, we have decent, affordable housing.” Some of that housing—actually it’s low-income—has gone to guys who work at Masterworks. Giving the fellas another break on top of having a job in the first place— Masterworks deliberately hires men with bad job histories. “Anything we can do to help provide stability in people’s lives, I see as important.”

As tenants leave, Kurt’s crew —this guy named Jim and his helpers, Mike, Darryl and Paul —get in there and you’d think magic elves had turned you-know-what-into shinola. Things like new stoves, cupboards and refrigerators where needed. Not just the secondhand junk the old owners would dredge up from the basement of one of their other buildings. Good stuff.

Irony of ironies, a major pain about affordable housing often is the people who can afford it. They don’t pick up behind themselves and so a caretaker has a full-time job just keeping the place from being a community eyesore. Importantly, they draw way too much heat.

Not long ago, I was picking up litter in the parking lot. A guy started complaining out his window—I’m not making this up—that I should “Leave that garbage alone. Stop picking up my garbage. What the f—is wrong with you?” And so on. Til he said the magic word that starts with an N. Wasn’t much I could do except talk about his mama. But when he offered to kick my ass, I was able to march right inside and call the damned cops. When the police got there, stupid didn’t have any better drunken sense than to walk out in the yard and talk to them. That got him a free ride to detox. Later, when I told Jeager about it all, he was genuinely surprised that the guy, who was Indian, had used the epithet. I told Dave, who’s white, “Y’all ain’t got no corner on racism.” I said to myself, NAACP. N——‘s Ain’t Always Colored People.

Far as I can tell, none of my neighbors appreciates the good thing we got going. I mean, Kurt is real patient, but will take only so many my-dog-ate-it excuses when it’s time to get up off the rent. And, the other day, I heard four evictions were in the works. All I can say is it ain’t like Kurt doesn’t give you a chance to get on the good foot. Problem is more rope you give some folk the more determined they are to hang themselves with it. And then have their lip stuck out about the landlord being mean or—a perennial favorite—racist. As if he made ‘em get drunk, tear their behinds, cut each other and constantly have the cops breaking something up or hauling somebody off. Probably every last one of ‘em knows, just like I do, what it is like to have been homeless. You will do anything to not repeat that experience, believe me. Except, I guess, be responsible enough to not have the cops come so often that they actually barged into the office one day, barking at the receptionist that the church better straighten the tenants out or the place would be shut down.

The church is digging up funding (BBC sunk roughly $800,000 of its own money into the purchase) to finance the bigger pieces. A prospective community center. Maybe more housing. Depends who comes along and how deep their pockets are. In the meanwhile, they’re doing fine on their commitment.

We’re only talking three buildings at this point, but it beats a blank. At least me, my daughter and all the damned cats we got think so.

Dwight Hobbes is a freelance writer for Pulse and Southside Pride, and a playwright and TV/radio commentator.