Killo site sale another blow to East Raleigh residents

The Killo Exterminating site on the corner of East Martin and Person streets in Raleigh has sold for $1.1 million – for a less-than-quarter-acre lot. Keep in mind this site probably has environmental issues depending on whether chemicals associated with the exterminating industry were stored in such a fashion that they could have leaked into the ground.

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, members of the Concerned Citizens for District C Equity marched around the luxury Lincoln Apartments in the bitter cold. That site, between Martin and Hargett streets, is 2.06 acres and sold for about $2 million in 2013. If the site were sold today, using the Killo numbers, it would be worth about $8 million. The John W. Winters property, bounded by South East, East Hargett, East Martin streets and the City of Raleigh Greenway, would be valued at about $14 million.

I cite these numbers because most of the people in Raleigh’s District C would not be able to partake in any of the products of any future development on these sites, no more than we live in the Lincoln Apartments or, for that matter, the luxury SkyHouse apartments on Blount Street.

With this insight into the value of real estate in East Raleigh, what can we imagine will occur along New Bern Ave or on the tracts of land the City of Raleigh owns all over East Raleigh in the redevelopment areas? The city used federal grant money to acquire those tracts for the benefit of the indigenous population ostensibly to help eradicate the years of institutional racism and Jim Crowism that kept East Raleigh a step ahead of Northern slums and ghettos.

The residents were told that the redevelopment was not another “Urban Removal” program, yet here we are, and that is exactly what has occurred. The saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What are we supposed to do once we don the shame that we now bear?

The battle of the haves vs. the have-nots is right at your home’s doorstep. Don’t think we East Raleigh residents are going to get to participate in any of this increased value. The golden rule in the game is to buy low and sell high, and, brothers and sisters, they have been softening up land prices in East Raleigh for years. Remember comprehensive code enforcement of the homes we were living in?

The increases in our most recent property bills are there for a purpose, and that purpose is to ease our minds into the notion that our properties are too expensive for us to keep.

Income inequality is destroying historical East Raleigh, District C.

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 3:54 PM with the headline "Killo site sale another blow to East Raleigh residents."