RALEIGH - In its worst days, the Chavis Heights public housing complex had sunk to a row of sagging brick barracks-style apartments. Nobody had air-conditioning. The heating system leaked. Crime was so bad that police set up a special substation. Now, after a $40 million remake, Chavis Heights has bright yellow villas, quiet streets with a view of downtown, and market-rate apartments mixed in with the subsidized housing.

Still, the place draws criticism.

For one thing, Chavis offers 141 units for low-income tenants -- less than half the old number. With rent starting at $780 in the market-rate units, the word "gentrification" tends to get spoken.

For another, Chavis is surrounded by a black metal fence, 6 feet high along the Lenoir Street side. It's a nod to Southeast Raleigh's persistent crime, and it tends to give Chavis a closed-off feeling.

But judging by the waiting list, it's clear the new development is a cleaner, safer and more comfortable replacement.

"I like it fine," said Clark Kearney, 76. "You don't have all the riffraff. Around 11 o'clock, it's quiet over here."

Raleigh is busy overhauling its public housing, trying to turn troubled eyesores into attractive -- though smaller -- neighborhoods. The notorious Halifax Court north of downtown became Capitol Park, which is now a short walk from the new Capital City Grocery, J. Betski's and 18 Seaboard restaurants and Ace Hardware.

Rebuilding Chavis was complicated business. As public housing, it was clearly troubled in its last decade. But generations of former residents cherished it. It had community. Powerful blacks in Raleigh got their start there.

When Chavis closed in 2004, thanks to a $22.3 million federal Hope VI grant, more then 200 people held a reunion. They recalled a time when neighbors looked after each other's children and everybody had a lush flower garden.

Built in 1940, Chavis represented a national desire to improve dilapidated buildings that had housed the urban poor during the Depression.

It was plain, functional and meant exclusively for black families. The projects also adjoined segregated Chavis Park, a magnet for blacks all over eastern North Carolina -- including jazzman Cab Calloway, who once swam there while on tour.

"Public housing really doesn't deserve a bad reputation," said Tom Barrie, who teaches at N.C. State University's College of Design. "Much of it was built quite well, and Chavis apparently was, too."

Hope VI is a program run through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and its aim is to reshape public housing that has fallen into disrepair.

The money came with some guidelines.

The project had to offer housing for mixed-income families. The old Chavis Heights was 100 percent public housing across its nearly 300 units, many of them occupied by single mothers and children.

Like at the old Chavis Heights, residents pay a percentage of their income in rent -- $200 a month, for example. But unlike at the old Chavis, residents are required to work unless they are disabled.

A mix of residents

This project also offers 27 two- and three-bedroom market-rate apartments. That way, the thinking goes, it won't create an economic ghetto.

"The idea is you can't tell who's low-income and who's not," said Allison Hapgood with the Raleigh Housing Authority, the local agency that manages Chavis. "It's not everyone's business that you're on public housing."

Guidelines also demanded security. Thus the fence, which stands 6 feet tall around the subsidized apartments and about chest-high around the senior center and market-rate units.

Next page >