CULTURES CLASH AT GREEN MEADOWS

Baldwin Tries To Mesh Low-Income Housing, Suburbs

The evictions have begun.

Officials of Green Meadows apartments in Baldwin Borough moved last week to
remove tenants who sold drugs and allowed dealers to live in their apartments.

Also being forced to leave are the parents or guardians of a gang of
children, ages 8 to 12, who are accused of forcing their way into an
apartment March 13 and overpowering and molesting the two women who lived
there.

In addition, the Allegheny County Housing Authority said it planned to
disqualify anyone involved in any type of criminal activity from the
federal government's Section 8 voucher program, which pays rent subsidies
to low-income residents of the massive complex in the South Hills.

Linda Vicari, regional manager for Home Properties, the Rochester, N.Y.,
firm that has managed Green Meadows since 1998, said a small percentage of
tenants had given the community a bad reputation by failing to control
their children or selling drugs. Police arrested 18 people in a drug
roundup last month.

"We had problems and we are trying to clean them up," she said.

But the underlying problems that have sullied Green Meadow's reputation
will be harder to fix.

To qualify for about $30 million from a federal program to renovate the
complex, the owners had to agree to rent half of the apartments to people
unable to afford market rents, which range from $430 a month for a studio
apartment to $710 for a townhouse.

In all, 417 families who use what are known as Section 8 vouchers to pay
part of their rents now live at Green Meadows, a community that never
accepted Section 8 vouchers before 1998.

Many of the new residents moved to the complex from city and county housing
projects, creating a clash of cultures with longtime suburban residents.

Prior to 1998, Vicari said, the complex was "predominantly white," although
she couldn't produce specific percentages.

According to 2000 census numbers, Baldwin Borough was about 96 percent white.

Today, Vicari said, half of the 1,800 residents of Green Meadows are
minority-group members. That means that most of the nonwhite residents of
the borough live in the 55-acre apartment complex.

That quick change has been hard for many to accept.

Housing Recruitment

Generations of South Hills residents knew Green Meadows as the Baldwin
Court apartments. It was the first stop out of the nest for young adults
and newlyweds, and often a last stop for elderly people downsizing from
their suburban homes.

George Bradley, a Baldwin Borough native who owns the Bradley House of
Catering on Brownsville Road, said his wife, Boots, lived in the complex in
the 1950s after her parents moved here from New York.

"This was a very nice place, but how it has changed," Bradley said.

"They are bringing inner-city families here. People are hanging out on
corners and in stores. Groups of youths are carousing. I wouldn't walk
through there now, and no one else would, either," Bradley said.

Built in 1951, the 1,071 apartments in 144 red-brick buildings are on a bus
line and within walking distance of a pharmacy, a grocery, restaurants and
a shopping center.

Over the years, the complex was sold twice. One previous owner, Ginsburg
Development Corp. of Hawthorne, N.Y., undertook an extensive renovation
project in the 1980s.

In 1998, a limited partnership bought the complex and placed it under the
management of Home Properties, a real estate investment trust that owns or
manages about 300 apartment complexes from Illinois to Maine.

Home Properties renamed the complex Green Meadows and applied to
participate in a federal program to raise capital to renovate the apartments.

The capital would come through the Section 42 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
Program. Section 42 is administered by the Internal Revenue Service and is
the nation's largest affordable-housing program.

This is how it works: Investors buy bonds issued by a public housing
authority. The money generated by the bonds goes to a developer, which
promises to rent a portion of the fixed-up apartments to low-income people.

For Green Meadows, the Allegheny County Residential Financial Authority
issued $31.4 million in bonds for renovations, said John Dowling, a
spokesman for the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development.

Vicari said Home Properties promised to rent 50 percent of Green Meadows'
1,071 apartments to low-income tenants.

The money paid for major renovations: new kitchens, baths and carpets,
landscaping, a community center with an exercise room and a computer lab. A
full-time activities director runs programs at the community center.

The complex already had a swimming pool, playgrounds and on-site laundry
facilities.

To find the promised number of low-income families, Green Meadows officials
"actively recruited" African-American families who qualified for Section 8
housing, said Charlotte Watson, director of the Fair Housing Services Center.

Under Section 8, families receive vouchers to help pay their rent to
landlords who participate in the program, administered by the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Fair Housing Services Center was an outgrowth of a federal class-
action lawsuit known as the Sanders Case. It was named after Cheryl
Sanders, a resident of Talbot Towers in Braddock who filed the
housing-discrimination lawsuit in 1988, claiming the county clustered black
residents of public housing into certain communities.

A settlement of the case in 1994 required the county to move housing-
project residents in seven communities into other suburbs of Pittsburgh.

The Fair Housing Services Center was set up to oversee that movement. The
center gets $1,000 from the federal government for each family it places in
a desegregated setting.

As a result, it was paid $103,000 for the 103 African-American families
that went to Green Meadows, said John W. Joyce, the county housing
authority's attorney and executive deputy director of administration.

Watson said her organization did not "place" African-American families at
Green Meadows, but merely advised them about housing opportunities.

Housing authority records indicate 417 families who receive Section 8
vouchers live at Green Meadows: 140 are white, 275 are African- American
and two of other races.

At the county Housing Authority, officials are questioning whether the Fair
Housing Services Center simply steered large numbers of African- American
families to Green Meadows without considering the impact on the community.

"The Fair Housing Services Center should have been out in the community,
making sure this goes smoothly," said Raymond N. Baum, special legal
counsel to the housing authority for the Sanders case.

"We don't think this is what the [Sanders] consent decree was supposed to
do," said Frank Aggazio, executive director of the housing authority.

Longtime Baldwin Borough residents who live in quiet neighborhoods around
the complex were surprised by the changes and felt misled by the way Home
Properties made them.

In September, nearby residents organized a community meeting to try to
squelch rumors and address concerns about Green Meadows.

Vicari told about 450 people at the meeting that Home Properties wanted to
be a good neighbor and provide quality housing, but was committed to
renting 50 percent of the apartments to low-income residents.

Ron Gruendl, one of the organizers of the meeting, said arguments broke
out. When the arguments turned to racial issues, he adjourned the meeting.

"We noted that was not what this meeting was about," Gruendl said.

Enforcing Leases

Even as representatives of Home Properties sought out low-income renters,
they repeatedly told borough officials that Green Meadows would not become
a Section 8 housing project.

It may have been a matter of semantics -- Vicari said the company could
make that statement because it didn't receive subsidies from HUD, which
administers the Section 8 program. It simply accepted Section 8 vouchers.

She said the changes in the population at Green Meadows should not be
viewed as problems.

"Section 8 is not a kind of people. It is a type of income," Vicari said,
pointing out that if someone paid his rent with Social Security, no one
would attach a derogatory connotation to that form of government assistance.

"What is called for is education and adjustment," Vicari said.

Families that moved to Green Meadows from urban neighborhoods said they
came there in search of the same things everyone wants in the suburbs.

Ayesha Alexander, a single mother, said she moved with her 8-year-old
daughter from East Liberty in August because she couldn't find an apartment
that was safe and clean with a landlord who would accept her Section 8
voucher. She was thrilled with the apartment and amenities she found at
Green Meadows, where she works as a receptionist during the day so she can
attend college criminal-justice classes at night.

She said she believes the problems are more complex than people of
different races simply not liking each other.

"It's culture shock for a lot of people when other people move in," she
said. "Some people were used to playing their music loud in the city. Some
people hear loud music and they get scared.

"This is a reality check for suburban people who see issues coming up next
door. Everywhere you go, there are issues and it takes time to resolve them."

Alexander said she knows some people at Green Meadows are likely to
stereotype her and other single mothers.

"I knew when I moved out here that I was coming with a label on my head. I
could have taken that and done what they expected of me. But I took it as
motivation to do better."

To do that, she said, single mothers must put their children first,
supervising and guiding them before trying to have a social life of their
own. She chided women leaseholders who have allowed men whose names are not
on the lease to move in with them.

"Young girls like bad guys and sometimes they make bad choices. But nothing
is worth losing your home over," she said, referring to women who were
evicted after others living in their apartments were arrested on drug
charges last month. "No guy is worth that."

Baldwin Police Chief Chris Kelly said that since the population of Green
Meadows changed, his officers had spent an inordinate amount of time there,
handling domestic issues, family disputes and complaints about unattended
children, drug use, littering and alcohol abuse.

The complex holds about 10 percent of the borough's population, but since
January, Kelly said, it has produced 36 percent of the total police calls.

"We have never had violent crime there," Kelly said. "Our biggest problems
are people with criminal histories living there off the lease. People in
[Green Meadows] are creating the problem by allowing it to happen."

Kelly has asked for a meeting with HUD to discuss the problems. At the
housing authority, officials think Green Meadows has dropped the ball.

"I have been doing this for 32 years. The key has been tenant screening and
strict enforcement of the leases," said Baum.

Vicari said her company has tightened its rental policies, was conducting
background checks of renters and was evicting wrongdoers.

After the drug bust, she held a meeting with borough and Baldwin- Whitehall
School District officials to find new ways to cooperate.

"Not only are we personally committed, but our reputations and homes and
daily life revolve around this," Vicari said. "We are not going away. We
are not an overnight company."