Diminished Yamacraw community subject to rampant neglect, widening disparities

Walking along the uneven sidewalks of Yamacraw Village, a public housing development in downtown Savannah’s oldest Black neighborhood, signs of neglect are rampant. 

Windows in many of the townhome-style units are boarded up with wooden planks or heavy-duty steel. Crumbling plaster on the outside walls reveals old, rotting wood beneath. 

At the heart of the historic complex is a spark of life. Three women sit outside watching over the dozen children playing in a small front yard, as older boys, their fingers stained red from Hot Cheetos, cycle by.

Yet Yamacraw, which has been home to generations of Savannah families, is dying. Occupancy has decreased from around 90% in July 2019 to 40% in July of this year. On Friday, one more of its families left for good.

Chastity Coaxum was forced out of the only home two of her four children have ever known. She fell behind on rent after suffering two break-ins, robberies she says that are typical of the neglect that residents face here. 

“There’s always shootings and break-ins. They don’t have the right type of security footage that any other normal complex will have, just for the protection of children,” Coaxum said as she stood outside the unit filled with boxes of belongings. 

Several residents in addition to Coaxum are in varying stages of eviction proceedings. Others are planning to move due to what federal government reports describe as unlivable conditions that have deteriorated since the decision in 2020 to demolish Yamacraw. 

What’s more, their options for future housing are uncertain. That’s because in the long journey of Yamacraw’s decline, the City of Savannah and the Housing Authority of Savannah have taken a bureaucratic path that does not obligate them to keep affordable housing at the complex, or rehouse families in the new development or the same neighborhood.

Rafaella Nutini, director of asset management at the housing authority, says it’s too early to say what the scope and scale of new housing will be after Yamacraw’s demolition — she’s still waiting on the city to finish the last section of the demolition application. Then, federal officials have to approve it. She says the housing authority is committed to providing affordable housing in the future, however. 

Joshua Peacock, the city spokesperson, told The Current that the city hopes to have the Section 106 Review “completed this year.” A contracted historic preservation professional is conducting the last step of writing a full report on the findings, he said.

How has it come to this?

Pulling Yamacraw down and building anew has been in the works for years. In the multi-step process, residents have gotten more and more marginalized in the decision-making, even as their community has become more decrepit.

Anthony Maxwell grew up attending First Bryan Baptist Church in Yamacraw, the oldest standing church in Savannah and one of the oldest Black Baptist churches in the country. Now a community activist and milliner who splits his time between New York and Savannah, Maxwell has documented the neglect.

“Every time when I would come to Savannah, I would take pictures of the trash and the lack of upkeep of the vegetation,” he said. “Folks around town made it look like it was [neglected] because of the people that lived there. And I just never felt like that was accurate.…It’s heartbreaking.”

In 2012, Yamacraw was on an initial HUD-approved list for a Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversion. In 2015, Yamacraw was removed from that list, although it’s unclear why. 

A RAD conversion process would have obligated the housing authority to replace each public housing unit after Yamacraw’s demolition and give former residents the right and priority to move into the new development. 

Now, Yamacraw is slotted for a different type of demolition, with no binding requirements about the numbers of affordable homes, nor security that long-time residents could return.

The decision to demolish has meant living standards have deteriorated for residents.

Since 2017, Yamacraw received a series of failing scores on HUD inspections. The most recent report from April was done with a newer inspection system, but Yamacraw once again received a failing score: 46/100. According to HUD, Yamacraw has “failing conditions with a high prevalence of concerning defects.” 

As a result, HUD is supposed to inspect Yamacraw more frequently, monitor it closely and regularly, and even take administrative action if needed to protect residents.

Widening disparities

As Yamacraw’s buildings fall apart, the majority white areas of historic downtown Savannah are praised for their historic renovation and charm. 

Data from MIT shows a yawning prosperity gap, as well as an age gap, between residents of the historic white areas of downtown Savannah and Yamacraw.  

Yamacraw’s average income is $12,228, compared to up to $157,760 in the neighborhoods to its east. And 63.8% of Yamacraw residents are under the age of 18. In a nearby downtown area, only 1.4% of residents are under 18. 

The very factors that Yamacraw residents now enjoy — access to public transportation, parks and grocery stores — are the livability factors that make community activists wary that the city will use Yamacraw land for affordable housing, rather than upscale apartment developments.

“I think that it was neglected because it was a desired area that people wanted to develop,” Maxwell said. “Based on what I could see, it just seemed like everything around it was fantastic, [but] inside Yamacraw, it’s just horrible.

What are the next steps?

It will be months, if not years, before HUD approves demolition plans. Once that happens, the federal agency will provide Savannah’s housing authority with tenant protection vouchers for the remaining residents, according to Nutini.  

Vouchers allow residents who are living at Yamacraw when the application is approved to find comparable housing in the private market. Generally, residents continue paying rent that’s no more than 30% of their income, and the housing authority pays the difference.

But Yamacraw residents who are evicted or move out before that date, such as Coaxum, do not get vouchers. If a resident has a low credit score or is behind on rent, they also may be unable to qualify for a voucher. 

Although vouchers have potential — they don’t require building new units, and people get to choose where they live, it’s hard to find a landlord who will accept the voucher, said Katherine O’Regan, public policy professor at New York University and director of the school’s center for real estate and urban policy. In deciding whether to accept vouchers, landlords look at housing authority reputation and patterns of timely inspections. 

There’s also a racial component — Black and Hispanic people who receive vouchers are less likely to find a place to rent than others in the market, according to O’Regan’s research. And starting in neighborhoods with older, more run-down housing is also a disadvantage. Both setbacks in the voucher process would apply to Yamacraw. 

Nationally, 65% of people were able to successfully use their vouchers within a year in 2018. But in 2022, that number decreased to 55%. The dropoff in success rates is even greater for households with children —which is most households in Yamacraw. 

“Households that haven’t searched in the private market recently have an uphill learning curve at best,” O’Regan said. This also applies to longtime public housing residents in Yamacraw. 

That’s why the housing authority should step in to help Yamacraw residents with the search process and give them more time to use their voucher, O’Regan added.

Also, if the housing authority is truly “mission minded,” they can find current and former residents and offer them the right to come back, said Lauren Song, senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project.

“It’s the fair and right thing to do,” Song said.

Stuck in the gap

Coaxum can’t wait around for that promise of assistance, however.

A single parent with four children ages one to 10, Coaxum says moving to Yamacraw was her “worst mistake.” 

People broke into Coaxum’s unit when she was away visiting her father in Florida over the holidays, she said, shattering the windows and stealing workout equipment. 

As a result, Coaxum said she made reports to the housing authority, showed them her private camera footage, and tried to get transferred to another development. 

During her four years at Yamacraw, Coaxum paid her boss to drive her to and from work. 

But she rarely took advantage of the benefits of Yamacraw’s location. And after her 10-year-old son was jumped by a peer, she said she asked police to pick up her children and take them to school, out of concern for their safety. She doesn’t let her children play outside, scared of the crime she sees as rampant. 

Yamacraw’s location is extremely accessible–walking and biking distance from resources like health centers, grocery stores, schools, and libraries. That’s important because a majority of Yamacraw residents, like Brittany Famble, do not own cars. 

The housing authority doesn’t have those logistical challenges for residents on top of their mind, Famble says. When her unit was without water for three days, Famble said the housing authority paid for residents to stay at a hotel in Pooler. But like many other residents, Famble didn’t have transportation to get there. 

She’s now looking to move to Savannah’s southside, where apartment rents are cheaper. But she worries that she won’t be able to get by as easily in that part of town without a car.

Keeping a sense of community 

As the Yamacraw population diminishes, activists like Maxwell are doing their best to engage the community that’s left.

Maxwell is co-founder of the Yamacraw Restoration Project, which has engaged in conservation efforts for First Bryan Church, spearheaded the renovation of Yamacraw Square, held health fairs for residents, and brought in food trucks. The group is in the process of putting on a jazz festival for the fall.

“I want to preserve what we can preserve, and also bring something to the community that’s positive,” Maxwell said. “[Yamacraw Restoration Project] is made up of lots of people who love the fact that Yamacraw used to be what it used to be…they want to give back.”

Maxwell thinks residents should be more involved in what their futures hold: “You can have a plaque [commemorating Yamacraw], but what about the buildings? What about all the people that used to live there?” Maxwell asked. “You don’t just get to come into other peoples’ neighborhoods and develop and change it…the people who have lived there should be at the table.” 

Coaxum and her children’s dislocation is more stark. Because of her large family size, it’s been difficult to find a place to go. 

Soon, Coaxum and her children will move into temporary housing, she said. Until then, Coaxum hopes a relative can help out, but she said she has no concrete plans to tide her over until next month. 

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