UUFR’s Long History of Involvement with Low-Income Housing
The Raleigh Inter Church Housing (RICH) Park low-income apartment complex consists of 100 one-, two- and three-bedroom units located at 555 Method Road in Raleigh on 10 acres of land between Western Blvd. and Hillsborough Street. The property was bought from the O’Kelly family in 1968. The complex has housed as many as 200 to 300 people at a time, including up to 70 children. RICH Park is owned by five Raleigh churches, one of which is UUFR.
Method Community History
At the end of the Civil War, Jesse Mason invested in 69 acres of land in what was then called House Creek Township, part of which had been Camp Mangum during the war. In the spring of 1870, Mason began to subdivide and sell lots to former slaves. The new town, called Mason’s Village, was four miles west of Raleigh and near what is now Meredith College. Berry O’Kelly began by working at the general store in the village and later bought the store. Soon afterward he succeeded in bringing a railroad spur to the village, started a trans-Atlantic mercantile and warehouse, and established the first post office. It was the U.S. Post Office in 1890 that assigned the name “Method” to the community. Berry O’Kelly continued to invest in real estate and banking, bringing the first Merchant and Farmer’s Bank to Raleigh. In 1914 O’Kelly transformed the village’s one-room schoolhouse into a teacher training and boarding school for Blacks. The Berry O’Kelly School was one of only three fully accredited Black high schools in North Carolina in the early 20th century. The Pioneers Building in the Method Community Park across the street from RICH Park was the Agricultural Building of that high school. In the 1960s Raleigh incorporated Method.
RICH Park Is Born
On January 31, 1968, Articles of Incorporation for Raleigh Inter Church Housing, Inc., a NC non-profit corporation, were signed by Charles Ward, Gene Namkoong, Frank Hutchison, Robert Ward (UUFR), and Willie Lewis, representing the five owner-churches: First Baptist, Davie Street Presbyterian, First Cosmopolitan Baptist, Community United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh. Each church contributed $2,000 to start the project and each had four representatives on the Board of Directors. Jim Quinn from the UU Fellowship was the primary architect for the property.
A Deed of Trust for just over $1 million was obtained in June 1968; this deed was paid off in full in March 2010. The property is now worth over $5 million. At about the same time, a rent supplement contract was signed with HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) which provided rent subsidies to about 40% of the residents. When the subsidy money ran out in 2009 the affected residents received Section 8 vouchers.
The five church-owners have never needed to subsidize RICH Park, although they have been required to guarantee some loans. However, because the Board of Directors placed priority on making the apartments affordable, rents were kept so low for over 20 years that there were insufficient reserve funds to make repairs, and in 1993 HUD threatened to declare the loan in default for failure to make necessary repairs. The Board of Directors obtained loans from the federal and local governments as well as bank loans to make many much-needed improvements at that time. Later, in 2010, with the original mortgage paid off, a complete renovation of the 40-year-old property costing $4 million was carried out, which included bringing it into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, asbestos abatement and energy efficiency improvements, among other things. The renovation took place over a one-year period from groundbreaking on January 21, 2012 to the dedication of the rebuilt property on May 4, 2013.
The Board of Directors has had numerous opportunities to sell the property, but the churches have always decided to continue with the original mission of providing safe, affordable housing for low-income people. RICH Park is the only remaining property of its type which was funded in the 1960s and one of the few remaining non-profit HUD-financed projects built in the 1960s, since most of the others have failed and are now run for profit.
A few residents lived at RICH Park from the time it opened until they died. Many residents have saved their money so they could buy their own homes. The quality of life is far better than in most low-income housing projects. The level of crime is far lower, the sense of community is greater, and turnover is much lower, which has resulted in consistently less than a five percent vacancy rate.
UUFR Specifics
UUFR members on the RICH Park Board of Directors in 2024 include Joyce Pollack since 1980, Gisela Fleming since 2011, Bob Moxley since 2016 and Claire Zambrano since 2019. Other prior Board members are Claude Martin for 16 years (treasurer for many years), Bill Devereux, Julia Grasso, Shayne Gad, Lynda Hambourger, Greg Meyer and Dan Steen. Over the years, UUFR members have provided thousands of dollars to RICH Park by way of 5th Sunday/Social Action offerings. In addition, UUFR LEAP volunteers have helped out by doing chores, including raking the grounds and cleaning apartments for elderly residents. UUFR provided backpacks and school supplies for the Foundations of Freedom tutoring project run for more than 10 years by the Freedom Temple Church of Deliverance, and many UUFR members helped with tutoring including Gisela Fleming, Amber Gates, Lynda Hambourger, Diann & Rand Irwin, Steve Laesch, Bob & Chary Sundstrom, Nancy Tsekos, Pat Ward, Carmen White, Barbara Walls, Whit & Linda Hames, and Jan Chvatal. With assistance from UUFR members, the Sierra Club took children on nature outings through their Inner-City Outings program.
Thus, for 56 years, UUFR has played a major role in supporting the RICH Park community.
–by Joyce Pollack
RICH Park
This blog post was written by Joyce Pollack. Joyce has been a UUFR member since 1977 and was president from 1980 to 1982.
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