Third grader Shauntia Rountree wants to be a teacher.
She spends her afternoons at the Edgemont Community Center, part of the Few Gardens public housing development in North-East Central Durham.
Rountree said she enjoys coming to the center to do her homework, improve her reading and play with other children and volunteers--many of them Duke students. But in June, the Edgemont Community Center will relocate when the Few Gardens complex is torn down as part of an effort to revitalize the area.
In July 2000, the city of Durham received $35 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the form of a Hope VI grant, which is slated to redevelop a 96-block area that includes the Few Gardens complex. Gregory Lewis, after-school coordinator for the center, called the neighborhood "one of the highest drug and gang areas in Durham, maybe even the East Coast."
Physical redevelopment of the area will probably start this year, said Hope VI Coordinator Gwen Simpson of the Durham Housing Authority. Simpson said the revitalization project will probably be completed before the end of 2004, and will improve the area's safety.
Martina Dunford, the center's program director, shared in Simpson's excitement, although she expressed a more tempered view.
"There's two sides to this coin," she said. "The positive is that there's a lot of people that live in the Few Gardens community who I personally think could do things a lot different and better then they have. Sometimes you have to put fire under people's feet to convince them that they do and can."
On the flip side, Dunford said she is concerned that the redevelopment may not provide for all the current residents' housing needs.
Although increasing the total stock of housing, the revitalization of Few Gardens will decrease the units of conventional public housing--where families will use 30 percent of their income for rent and the rest is met by HUD--from 242 to 160. The 80 other families are to receive housing choice vouchers that they can use to live elsewhere in Durham and pay the same rate. Additionally, the plan calls for 60-70 affordable housing units, funded through low income tax credits, and 150 home ownership units to be built.
Before redevelopment begins, the DHA is working to establish a community and supportive services plan. Five million dollars of the Hope VI grant, along with an additional $15 million from partner organizations will fund services like daycare, transportation, health services and "whatever barriers are in the way to keep the family from becoming self-sufficient," Simpson said.
In the meantime, Edgemont staff are planning to move to a building on Corporation and Mangum streets, and, although the residents serviced by the center will be dispersed, Dunford said she expects the center will still be able to provide support.
"It's not like we're going to abandon them," she said. "The Edgemont staff has established a relationship with the residents in the Few Gardens community so we're there till the end. If there's something that they need, we'll be there to help."
Lewis said the center has recently felt constrained due to funding cuts and has lamented a lack of resources. But the new center will probably be bigger and able to provide more programming, Dunford said.
Duke students have mostly helped with the center through its afternoon programs. Two Duke organizations--Kids Cafe and Edgemont Tutors--currently send tutors to the center Monday through Friday afternoons.
Aside from tutoring, the Kids Cafe program partners with the Durham food bank to provide meals for children at the center each afternoon. Coordinator Jessica Rutter, a sophomore, said the program has no plans to cease operations after the center moves.
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