Tallahassee, FL – Tallahassee’s public housing tenant association is claiming that plans to redevelop Orange Avenue Apartments, the largest public housing community in the city, will result in displacement and that those plans proceeded without resident participation.

“It’s going to be just like they did in Goodbread Hills. They let nobody back in. They give you a voucher and say you’ll be eligible when you get back in when the site is finished. Because they hire a developer to manage the complex, you are not going to get back in,” said Oliver Hill, Sr. president and founder of the Orange Avenue United Tenant Association Inc. (OAUTA).

“No family at Orange Avenue Apartments will be displaced,” said Brenda Williams, the executive director of the Tallahassee Housing Authority, responding to concerns about displacement in an interview with WTXL ABC 27. “What I can say to the residents here at Orange Avenue Apartments is to trust the process.”

Hill claims that this process has already been violated.

“They violated our agreement on the Memorandum of Understanding on participation,” said Hill. “They did not give us the option to participate in the development plan, to sit at the table with the politicians and everything. We’re not at the table.”

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the housing authority and tenant association this June, guaranteeing funding, resources and the right of participation in operations, including new developments. By September the agreement was broken and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was urging the housing authority to meet and negotiate a resolution, warning that no local resolution would result in HUD headquarters taking over the dispute.

“They disagree with the contract then they shut our funds off so then we can’t communicate with our residents,” said Hill. “I feel that the management found the opportunity to do this. The same time they are trying to do a development plan then they withhold the resident council funds.”

Under HUD regulations the tenant association is recognized as the resident council and a resident management corporation representing all public housing residents in Tallahassee. HUD provides a federal subsidy to housing authorities for the proper funding of resident councils. With funding the tenant association hopes to hire staff to educate residents on the redevelopment plans.

Lack of funding isn’t the only issue Hill has with the housing authority, “They go around and tell the residents not to participate, but they will deny that they are doing it.”

Hill says that he still believes an agreement can still be reached, but it will require the housing authority to come to the table. “Until this housing authority sits and negotiates a good development plan with the resident participants then I will personally object to the plan. The residents elected me as the president to represent them, to be the voice of the people, and I intend to do that in good faith.”

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(Fight Back! News/Staff)”)

Tallahassee, FL – November 5 marked the due date for 2019 applications to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation. This year the city of Tallahassee has submitted two applications along with $1.3 million to secure funding for the redevelopment of Orange Avenue Apartments, currently the largest public housing community in Tallahassee, a 200-unit complex is on Tallahassee’s Southside.

The redevelopment effort is being led in part by Purpose Built Communities, an Atlanta non-profit founded by billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Julian Robertson, along with the wealthy Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins. The non-profit’s mission statement is to replicate Cousins’ redevelopment of the East Lake Meadows public housing complex in Atlanta throughout the United States.

The East Lake Meadows redevelopment has been criticized as “not a case study in community development, but instead a case study in community replacement.” by the Atlanta Studies Journal. In 1998 the East Lake tenant association sued the Atlanta Housing Authority in an attempt to stop the demolition of their community, however, the courts ruled against them. Only about 16% of families returned to the East Lake Meadows community after redevelopment, due to strict screening practices used by the development company.

“In Atlanta, I was there when they did it, I saw it, and I had friends who actually got mixed up in all of that. They kicked those people out,” said Tifany Hill, a Southside resident. Hill grew up in Orange Avenue Apartments with her father Oliver Hill, Sr., the co-founder and president of the Orange Avenue United Tenant Association (OAUTA), which represents all public housing tenants in Tallahassee.

The Tallahassee Housing Authority director Brenda Williams has stated that tenants will have a right to return after redevelopment. Hill is not convinced. “You are saying that all the tenants can come back, but let's put it in writing. Let's have all the parties sign it, let's get lawyers in, let's sign this paperwork, and that's what they are not doing here.”

She also criticized the lack of tenant representation, asking, “How are you going to have a committee when there's no tenant on it. And then you aren't talking to the tenant association. You're not even involving them.”

While tenants are given no representation, powerful business owners do sit on the boards of Whole Child Leon and its South City Foundation, which serves as the local arm of the Purpose Built Community redevelopment.

“The city has no intent of replacing all demolished public housing units or of allowing residents to return. These wealthy developers only see poor Black people as an obstacle to overcome in their hunt for profit on the Southside,” said Regina Joseph, president of the Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC), an organization which campaigned earlier this year against the construction of the Tallahassee Police HQ in the Southside.

According to the proposed development plans, the new apartments will only include 157 public housing units, while 97 market rate units will be added to the community. A two-bedroom market rate apartment would cost $1000 a month according to the plan, higher than what 80% of South City residents currently pay. The plans further specify that only “eligible” current tenants may return.

Leon County suffers from a lack of affordable housing, with 43% of residents unable to afford their basic living expenses on their income according to the 2018 ALICE report by United Way. The Tallahassee Housing Authority has accepted applications for Section 8 vouchers for only one month in the last decade, and over 15,000 qualifying families remain on the waiting list.

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