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Message from the Editor, Victoria L. Valentine...
Ten
years ago, after the state of Virginia announced plans
to build a maximum-security prison in rural Bayview
on the state’s eastern shore, Alice Coles joined
local efforts against the move. The county eventually
tabled the prison plan and Coles, a single-mother of
two who earned $5,000 a year as a crab picker, emerged
as a leader in Bayview. The poor Black town is a 300-year-old
community where some of the residents’ ancestors,
freed slaves, settled after the Civil War.
Farming and seafood
industry jobs in the area began to disappear in the
mid-1990s, causing the community to fall further into
poverty. More than 100 African Americans were living
in Bayview in substandard rental housing — shacks
with no indoor plumbing, exposed wiring and in many
cases lacking kitchen facilities. Buoyed by their victory,
the residents formed Bayview Citizens for Social Justice
to improve their community and living standards.
Coles and a core group
enlisted the advice and counsel of non-profits, academics,
government agencies, a generous architect and a project
manager with experience working on rural poverty programs.
It was a long haul, but after visits from civil rights
leaders, public attention was drawn to their plight.
Over the years, community clean-ups were organized and
adequate housing, a clean water system, street lights
and a village center with a grocery store, community
center and child care center were planned.
Lessons in budgets, politics
and lobbying were hard-won, but by 2004, Bayview had
raised $10 million from federal, state and private sources.
Last year, 14 families moved across the street from
their dilapidated shacks into rental homes with indoor
plumbing and central heating.
Coles’s accomplishments
garnered the attention of Ed Bradley, who did a story
about Bayview for 60 Minutes in 2003. Today, Bayview
continues to progress. Home improvement indeed.
In this issue of The Crisis,
we examine how African Americans are faring in the housing
game. At nearly 50 percent, the homeownership rate for
African American households has reached historic heights.
Good news, certainly. However, as Danilo Pelletiere
notes in our examination of Black housing on page 16,
“The true measure of the state of housing is the
extent to which people, whether they are renters or
owners, are living in decent, affordable homes.”
Viewed in this manner, many Americans, particularly
African Americans, could use some home improvement.
To put the issue into perspective
consider this: There are more Americans with housing
problems than are without health insurance. In fact,
according to the latest American Housing Survey issued
by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),
half of all Blacks, some of them homeowners, face such
problems — unaffordable, inadequate and/or crowded
housing.
Bayview is not alone. The inadequate
living conditions the Virginia community faced are not
common, but they do exist elsewhere. According to the
HUD housing survey, 439,000 American homes occupied
year-round lack any form of heat, 1.4 million lack some
or all plumbing facilities and nearly 9.6 million have
a primary water source that is not safe to drink. For
Black households, the figures are as follows: 35,000
lack heat, 262,000 lack some or all indoor plumbing
and nearly 1.5 million don’t have safe drinking
water.
The above figures are not from
decades ago, nor are they statistics for an impoverished
foreign nation. The 1949 Housing Act called for a “decent
home…for every American,” for many in this
prosperous country, the goal remains elusive.
Letters
to the editor may be sent to
The Crisis
7600 Georgia Avenue, NW
Suite 405
Washington, DC 20012 or
thecrisiseditorial@naacpnet.org
* Letters may be edited for length or clarity.
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