Goldsboro Housing Authority buys property, apartment building
By John Joyce
Published in News on August 2, 2015 1:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
The Goldsboro Housing Authority has acquired ownership of the Walnut Street School Apartments as well as a Head Start/Early Head Start facility on the opposite side of the block
Goldsboro is getting a new -- and refurbished -- low-income housing area.
In a deal finalized May 27, the Goldsboro Housing Authority took sole ownership of the Walnut Street Schools Apartments at 508 E. Walnut St., as well as a Head Start/Early Head Start facility, which is located at 505 W. Chestnut St.
The two properties anchor a city block lying just outside the Goldsboro Municipal Service District, the nine-block radius the city designates as "Downtown Goldsboro."
According to records obtained from the Wayne County Register of Deeds, the Wayne Action Group for Economic Solvency, WAGES, sold the properties to GHA for $730,000.
The apartments, which the housing authority said it plans to renovate, repair and maintain as low-income housing, were purchased in a private transaction not involving any city or county governing boards.
When asked if any local authorities were consulted regarding the proposed use of the tracts of land and the apartment and Head Start buildings, GHA officials responded that they did not consult any city or county leader and are not required to because they are not answerable to any local government body.
Current tenants of the Walnut Street Schools Apartments have until Aug. 31 to relocate.
The housing authority also said residents in compliance with their lease agreements are not being evicted. Rather, current leases are not being renewed as they expire.
WAGES director Dr. Marlee Ray said the Head Start facility will remain a school.
"WAGES leases the property back (from GHA) as WAGES does with Wayne County Public Schools," she said.
Ms. Ray said the apartments, built in 1991, were originally renovated from a school to low-income housing a year later. The conversion came about in a collaboration between WAGES -- then located at 300 N. Virginia St. and operating under a non-profit designation in the name of "The Walnut Street Limited Partnership" -- and Progress Energy.
The Goldsboro Housing Authority now owns nearly all of the property on the city block that links 508 E. Walnut St., the apartments, and 505 W. Chestnut St., Head Start, via South Slocumb Street.
A single lot remains in private hands -- a one-story residence at 105 S. Slocumb St. -- the owners of which said they have so far refused to sell.
Unlike the tenants of the Walnut Street School Apartments, the private homeowner cannot be forced out of her home.
Goldsboro Housing Authority chief executive officer Anthony Goodson -- who declined to be interviewed in person but responded to questions via email -- said the intended purpose of the purchase is to renovate the building as low-income housing "which may include the elderly and disabled if income criterions are met." He said there is no timetable yet in place for when full occupancy would be met.
The tenants are being forced out because "the work cannot be completed efficiently while the property is inhabited," according to Goodson.
Goodson said the purchase was authorized through HUD, using Capitol Funds allotted to GHA.
"The Capitol Fund provides funds to Public Housing Agencies for the development, financing and modernization of public housing developments and for management improvements," he said. "Our stated purpose was acquisition and renovation to improve public housing at efficient rates and costs with the purpose of prioritizing housing for low-income individuals who are working, disabled or elderly."
Current tenants facing forced relocation say they are at a loss then as to why they are being evicted. Tenants who agreed to be interviewed for this report asked not to be identified publicly for fear of reprisal.
"I'm going to have to find somewhere and get out of here," one tenant said.
Most tenants do not have family in the area and are unemployed, living solely on Social Security and disability benefits. They say they simply have no place to go.
Former property manager Valerie Klem said some of those tenants will end up on the street.
"I really feel like the tenants have been shafted," she said.
Ms. Klem, let go by GHA shortly after the building was purchased, managed the Walnut Street property for WAGES through a temporary employment agency for the last seven years. She said she was then taken on by GHA and continued to manage the apartments until such time as the GHA employees placed under her were fully trained.
She was informed June 22 her services would no longer be needed, Mrs. Klem said. She said she remains concerned for the tenants.
"I mean, you are looking at people whose income might be -- might be -- $730 a month in (Social Security)," she said.
Legally, the property has to remain low-income housing through 2022.
N.C. Housing Finance Agency communications director Margaret Matrone said there is a federal mandate that governs such acquisitions.
"There is an extended use agreement that goes with the property," she said. "Because federal tax credits are used for part of the financing, one of the conditions is that the housing remain available for 30 years to people who fall below 60 percent of the area's median income."
Mrs. Matrone said all public housing authorities, including the Goldsboro Housing Authority, are regulated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
HUD funds are applied for and allocated to public and private entities and programs that build, buy or renovate properties for the purpose of providing low-income housing. The developers receive tax credits that significantly reduce development and management costs, making investing in low-income housing an economically viable investment opportunity, Mrs. Matrone said.
The apartment building tenants were informed May 28, one day after the purchase, that their homes had been sold. They were given 90 days notice to vacate and offered relocation assistance in the form of GHA providing packers and movers, a reimbursement of one-month's rent and a change over of utilities to their new residences, if applicable, at no cost.
The two caveats to the relocation assistance -- the legal standard according to the laws set forth in the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisitions Act of 1970 -- were that the tenants be up-to-date on their rent and, in the case of the rental reimbursement, be out by July 1.
Goodson, in his emailed response, confirmed these stipulations.
"The relocation assistance offered to residents consists of but is not limited to: help finding a new place to live; packing and moving by a professional moving company at no cost to the resident; $100 for incidental expenses incurred in the moving process and reimbursement for any utility transfer fees. Additionally, one month's rent reimbursement was offered as an incentive for residents who moved within a certain period of time," he said.
Tenants listed a host of complaints regarding the assistance they say they have been offered, and many insisted that notice of the pending sale prior to its completion would have allowed them more time to prepare to move out.
"They did not tell us why it was being sold. We were told to relocate," a displaced tenant said.
She said she contacted the properties on the list of alternate low-income housing communities in the city provided by GHA, all of which are full and have lengthy wait lists that extend beyond Sept. 1. She said she earns too much money from her Social Security and disability benefits to qualify in some cases, but in other cases she does not make enough money to pay for a market-based rental.
"Real decent places are very expensive, and nowadays you have to pay a deposit that is the same as one month's rent. If I find an apartment that is $600 a month, and with a deposit of $600, how am I going to pay that?" she asked.
The GHA letter informed residents of the purchase and invited them to a tenants' meeting held June 4 at the Walnut Street Schools Apartments. At that meeting, attended by GHA representatives and members of the Goldsboro Police Department Housing Unit, residents were told to be out by Sept. 1 or be evicted, tenants said.
Mrs. Klem said she was aware that WAGES had wanted to unload the property for years, but no one who came to look at it ever showed real interest. Then GHA came along and the purchase was made.
"All they had to do was tap into HUD funds," she said.
Mrs. Klem was also at the tenants' meeting June 4, and said she witnessed first-hand when the Goldsboro police housing unit arrived. She jokingly asked if they were there to provide crowd control, she said.
"They told me, 'We work strictly with the housing authority,' and that is all they said," she added.
Capt. Dwayne Dean of the Goldsboro Police Department verified the housing unit was at the meeting at the request of the housing authority. He said the housing unit patrols and reports directly to GHA on crime in the housing communities.
"They are contracted by (GHA,) just like our school resource officers are contracted by Wayne County Public Schools," Dean said.
Mrs. Klem said the police were never forced to intervene, although some of the residents were upset.
"Some of them (tenants) got a little loud, raised their voices a little bit, but that's it," Mrs. Klem said.
Despite the legality of the actions taken by GHA and WAGES, many of the tenants still feel they were duped.
Weeks prior to the sale, they said they saw people poking around the property and asked Mrs. Klem if the building as about to be sold.
Mrs. Klem said she was aware of the pending sale, but she had no hard facts and she did not want to give tenants information that might not have been fully accurate. She was also under orders not to say anything, she said.
"Myself and the maintenance guy knew GHA had purchased the building. But we were told not to say anything by WAGES," she said.
Six weeks after the meeting, when tenants first learned they were being forced out, many still have no idea where they are going to go.
"When I first came here I was told that since I was elderly and disabled, once qualified, always qualified. And when they first told us we had to relocate, I asked if they were going to fix it up could I come back," one resident said.
She has lived at the Walnut Street School Apartments for more than 20 years. She said she has considered leaving over the years as drug dealing and other criminal activity encroached into the area surrounding the apartments, but that things seemed to be improving lately.
"At first they told me yes, I would be welcomed back. Now they have told me no," she said.
Staff writer Ethan Smith and staff photographer Casey Mozingo contributed to this report