By Sam Foust

Special to the Salisbury Post

In response to County Commissioner Craig Pierce’s comments regarding public housing in Salisbury, I would like to share some facts and insights in hopes to better inform Mr. Pierce, and all residents of Salisbury, regarding poverty and public housing.

First, let me begin by saying I do not know Mr. Pierce but have heard from others he is a fair and honest commissioner and has the good of Rowan County at heart. I believe his hurtful and inaccurate statements were made in frustration and out of not knowing the particulars of public housing.

Hopefully I will be able to provide valuable knowledge for Mr. Pierce moving forward so we as a community can put his words and perceptions behind us and work together to improve the housing, education, and economic conditions of all Rowan residents.

Corrections, insight, and explanations regarding Commissioner Pierce’s statements as recorded in the Jan. 8 edition of the Salisbury Post:

“The city of Salisbury contributes to the problem, Pierce said, because of the public housing contained within the city limits.”

The Salisbury Housing Authority is the only entity or agency providing “public housing” within the Salisbury city limits. We own, manage, and maintain 465 apartments scattered across the city of Salisbury. (Editor’s note: The completion of Brenner Crossing will bring the total to 635.)

We take pride in our curb appeal and are constantly doing as much as our limited funds will allow to make these apartments safe, sanitary, and affordable for our residents. We have been complimented by visitors from other towns for how well our apartments are maintained, including the mayor of Salisbury, England, when their contingent visited a few years ago. We are scored each year by HUD to assess our efforts in the areas of maintenance, finance, and to be sure we are serving the correct income citizens. The Salisbury Housing Authority has been scored as a “High Performing Agency” for the past 16 years. I urge everyone to compare our neighborhoods to other towns and cities’ public housing when you travel.

“I (Pierce) would tell them they shouldn’t have four children because that’s not what their income can support.”

The 465 families who live in our apartments have a total of 338 children ages birth to 18 years old. This is an average of 0.7 children per apartment, well below the national average.

“… ‘most residents don’t pay property tax … the study found 42 percent of Rowan residents own all property in the county’…. Referencing public housing, Pierce said ‘Rowan has to find a way to put low-income and impoverished residents on the tax books’…”

It is interesting that 42 percent own all property; however, they do not live in all the property. They rent it to others, then use the rent to pay their property tax, as we do. The Salisbury Housing Authority pays a fee called a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) to the property tax books for all property we own. The federal government established a formula that all housing authorities pay nationwide. We calculate it yearly and send it in to Salisbury and Rowan County. The reason all housing authorities use the same formula is because the tax rate in “resort or high per capita” cities would charge those housing authorities taxes far above their budgets.

We pay taxes each year to Salisbury and Rowan County according to federal laws. We just mailed ours last week.

“We have got to quit enticing people to come and live here for free.”

All Salisbury Housing Authority residents pay rent calculated to 30 percent of their adjusted income. No one lives there for free.

We do, however, attract folks from outside of Rowan County to apply for housing. We house approximately 35 families of disabled veterans who have moved here to be close to the VA Hospital. We are happy to serve these deserving residents.

In addition to the disabled veterans, we house approximately 100 other disabled head-of-households who are living for the most part off disability checks. We also house approximately 150 elderly residents, many of whom are living off Social Security checks.

We also house approximately 180 families who are working, in college or participating in a job-training program. They all pay rent.

“ ‘But every county in the state isn’t building public housing as quick as they can scrape ground up. We need to have a state mandate that says a county can only have a certain percentage of public housing.’ Pierce said Salisbury-Rowan Utilities attracts most public housing complexes to Salisbury…”

In fact, HUD has not funded or allowed additional public housing apartments to any city since the mid-80s. HUD has “frozen” or even reduced the number of public housing units allotted for all housing authorities through their ACC contracts.

HUD has offered several programs available to housing authorities to re-build old public housing apartments and tear down the older, dilapidated ones. These funds are very competitive and usually go to large metropolitan cities. The Salisbury Housing Authority has applied several times in recent years to secure these HUD funds, but have not been fortunate enough to receive them from HUD.

However, we have been successful in securing and using other funds to tear down the former Lincoln Park apartments and build Carpenter’s Corner in its place, in addition to securing state funds to build the new Brenner Crossing. When trying to attract new industry to Salisbury I believe the city is much more enticing to prospective employers when they tour and see Carpenter’s Corner and Brenner Crossing than if they had viewed Lincoln Park and Civic Park in the past. And we do appreciate our partnership with Salisbury-Rowan Utilities. They are very good to work with.

“…. Mr. Pierce mentioned Clancy Hills Apartments in Salisbury….”

The Salisbury Housing Authority is not related in any way to Clancy Hills. We do not own or manage these apartments and they are not public housing. There are many private owners of “assisted” housing other than “public housing” in Salisbury and Rowan County.

Mr. Pierce goes on to describe a management problem that is universal to all property managers — drugs and live-ins. All apartment managers have these challenges, even “market rate” apartments. The Salisbury Housing Authority vigorously enforces our lease, which includes a ban on drugs and live-ins. We terminate many leases yearly when we can prove drugs or live-ins are in our apartments, and I am sure most property managers do likewise.

Chance to learn

In summary, I believe Mr. Pierce is simply uninformed, as are most citizens who have not taken the opportunity to research public housing and the Salisbury Housing Authority. Public Housing is just one of HUD’s many assisted programs. Multifamily Housing, Veteran’s 811 Housing Program and the Elderly 202 Housing Program are also under HUD’s variety of assisted housing programs. To call all assisted housing “public housing” shows a simple lack of knowledge.

I appreciate Commissioner Klusman’s comments when she challenged Mr. Pierce. I also appreciate Salisbury Post Editor Elizabeth Cook’s editorial in Sunday’s paper and her excerpts from Ruby Payne’s book on poverty in America.

Much research has been done regarding the devastating effects on children who are born into poverty. It is very easy to find convincing research about the direct correlations among poverty, education and income.

I highly recommend everyone interested to read Hart and Risley’s 30 million word gap research. ( “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3,” by University of Kansas researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, 2003). The essence of this study shows students from generational poverty often arrive for their first day of kindergarten two to three developmental years behind their peers.

This developmental delay due to poverty is not about IQ, race or national origin; it is about exposure to life experiences, travel and vocabulary. This gap sometimes widens as students progress through school despite teachers’ best efforts to catch these students up, because as they advance their peers are also progressing. Some communities have recognized this problem and have begun to collaboratively find solutions.

Purpose Built solutions

The East Lake neighborhood in Atlanta is one example. (Google: Purpose Built Communities, East Lake) At East Lake, the public housing was so dilapidated, over 10 percent of their apartments were declared too bad to use and boarded up. The elementary school scored last in student test scores, only 10 percent of households worked, and 90 percent of the residents were victims of a felony yearly.

The East Lake community is now a national example of how a community can become well educated, employed and economically independent. The Purpose Built Model focuses on a seamless cradle-to-career education pipeline, mixed-income housing, and healthy initiatives and alternatives for individuals and families.

The elementary school in East Lake continues to have a 95 percent poverty level as measured by free-and-reduced lunch eligible students while now scoring in the top five elementary schools in the Atlanta area. Now, approximately 90 percent of the residents are employed and crime is among the lowest in the area.

The Purpose Built Model was our goal and vision in rebuilding the dilapidated Civic Park apartments in the West End. The new apartments called Brenner Crossing, when finished, will provide 170 new, energy efficient, mixed-income apartments for the elderly, disabled and low-income residents of Salisbury.

I salute Dr. Lynn Moody’s efforts to replicate East Lakes’ achievement for all students in the Rowan-Salisbury School System. Her teachers and principals will do their best to help students born into poverty, but we, as a community, must do our part by helping to insure the low-income students receive the cradle-to-kindergarten piece that is missing for many children.

Novant Health Systems’ Dari Caldwell, and others, are also investigating ways to improve health care and healthy living for the residents of the West End. We appreciate their partnerships and collaboration.

I say all this to support the City of Salisbury and Rowan County’s efforts to attract economic development and jobs to the area. It must be a community wide, holistic approach to better economic development, jobs, education, healthy living and public safety. I truly believe, in most cases, an adult’s income, and therefore the ability to pay more taxes, is directly proportional to their education level. Education is the great economic equalizer.

A seamless cradle-to-career education system, mixed-income housing and healthy, safe living would be a worthy goal for all stakeholders in Salisbury and Rowan County.

Sam Foust is executive director of the Salisbury Housing Authority.