THREATS

Displacement & affordability

The Village has vacant lots, absentee landlords, and homeowners who live in a variety of housing conditions, including homes with low property values and affordable rent. The costs for commercial and residential real estate being relatively low, as compared to downtown, are attracting investors to the Village, causing some discomfort among the current residents. The residents are not the only stakeholders at risk for displacement eitherlocal artists and small businesses could also be forced out by rising rents and property taxes. As such, solutions to preserve and encourage affordable housing, as well as provide property tax relief for existing owners will be important to the future of the Village.

Changing character

The Village of West Greenville is known for its unique, eclectic character, but future development pressure could shift or dampen it -a pattern that has been repeated nationally. This attitude has been reflected through sentiments against potential mixed-use developments like the Woven project. While this project has endured numerous resident meetings and communication with other local stakeholders, as well as several public concessions, other developments may alter the character of the Village without such regard for neighborhood opinions. Creating basic guidelines that can be enforced through City processes by implementing a historic or conservation district with the ability to decide on changes for the residential areas can create promising results in maintaining the character of the Village.

Anti-development attitude

Change is always hard for residents that have a sense of place in any community. Various neighborhood stakeholders and homeowners in the Village have opposed multiple new development projects. Stakeholders fear that changes in character will lead to an unrecognizable neighborhood they will be priced out of, so they discourage projects that they feel will change the character of the Village. Challenging new development is also an outgrowth of a national trend of rising NIMBYism (not in my back yard) by homeowners, possibly out of an additional fear of sharing their neighborhood with a rental demographic, inappropriately accusing them of lacking investment in the community and, at worst, potentially lowering their land values. Of course, this is quite the opposite, as new rental residents are just as likely to support local businesses, creating the foot traffic needed to sustain them for the benefit of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, by blocking new construction and adaptive reuse, this anti-development attitude can lead directly to problems of displacement and affordability, as projects at lower price points achieved through higher unit counts are chased away.

Disinvestment of absentee property owners

Some absentee owners (non-locals who own and rent properties in the neighborhood) lack the financial or personal interest to upkeep their properties and maintain the appearance of the Village, keeping affected real estate values low. Though this technically represents naturally-occurring affordable housing in a desirable neighborhood (also known as “filtering”), this can hinder the outside view of the Village and hurt the property values of buildings -new or old, near these likely code-deficient properties. Additionally, these properties with deferred maintenance have made prime targets for investors interested in redevelopment and “house flipping” in the Village, meaning these affordable homes are effectively removed from the market first, and “ground zero” for gentrification.