8 | GREENVILLE JOURNAL | 07.06.2018 GREENVILLEJOURNAL.COM
Pushing Back Building affordable housing on city-owned property around Unity Park is Greenville’s way to counter rising housing costs and gentrification
Words by Cindy Landrum | Photo by Will Crooks
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rguably the city owns some of the most valuable and developable land in Greenville — 25 acres just a couple of blocks away from the new Unity Park. The city plans to use that land for new affordable housing to counter rising property values and housing costs around the park and in the surrounding neighborhoods near downtown that some say are squeezing out lowerincome and working-class residents. “We have a unique opportunity to put a check on the market and rising values because we own the edges of the park,” Mayor Knox White said. “We can push back.” Unity Park will build on 60 acres bordered by Hudson, Mayberry, and Meadow streets with an estimated cost of $40 million, half coming from the city and half coming from private and corporate fundraising. The first phase of the park is expected to open in 2020. Unity Park’s purpose is twofold — to provide needed green space and to give an economic boost to an area of the city that has thus far been largely left out of the growth Greenville has seen over recent years. “Any time a new baseball stadium or park is built, you hope it will be a catalyst for development, but it also raises property values around it,” White said. “It’s a dilemma everybody’s dealing with.” The development has come sooner than the city expected. It took a few years for the area around Fluor Field
to develop. After Falls Park was built, it was a year or two before RiverPlace was built. But investors and developers flocked to the Unity Park area years before the park was officially approved. Some residential units near the park sold for $600,000, proving the value of the land the city is donating, White said.
“We need to make sure it remains a place for everyone.” Mary Duckett “There’s no speculation that the land we’re donating is valuable,” he said. “The market has already tested it.” Mary Duckett, president of the neighborhood association for Southernside, one of the neighborhoods that borders the park, said now that city funding and a name for the park have been decided, she’s shifting her concerns to how the community protects its residents and maintain its identity.
“We need to make sure it remains a place for everyone,” she said.
What is affordable housing? By federal government definition, affordable housing is housing that takes no more than 30 percent of a household’s income. The Census Bureau’s 2012-16 American Community Survey shows nearly 34 percent of city of Greenville residents exceed that level. That’s because, within the city, incomes have not kept up with increasing housing costs and escalating property prices, said Ginny Stroud, the city’s community development administrator. Don Oglesby, executive director of the nonprofit affordable housing developer Homes for Hope, said he wishes that people would stop thinking about affordable housing as something they can see. “When most people hear the phrase affordable housing, they think of a mill village, or a HUD [Housing and Urban Development] high-rise or a blighted area. Nobody wants that,” he said. Instead, Oglesby said housing for the city’s low- to moderate-income households should be incorporated into neighborhoods. “From the outside looking in, you shouldn’t be able to tell affordable housing from market-rate housing. It might be smaller, but you shouldn’t be able to tell a difference in