LeVelle Moton fought back tears Monday as he spoke to a crowd gathered at a park on East Lane Street in Raleigh for the long awaited groundbreaking for Cottages of Idlewild, an 18-unit affordable housing community that he and longtime friends through the nonprofit Raleigh Raised Development are building with the Raleigh Area Land Trust.
Cottages of Idlewild will feature 14 ownership units and four rental apartments, for individuals and families earning 30% to 80% of area median income. The purchase price of the homes will be around $145,000. The median price of a home in the Triangle was $434,000 in July, according to The News & Observer. The project has 16-month construction schedule.
Moton, the men’s basketball coach at N.C. Central University, grew up on the street which was once a high crime, high poverty area. It is now giving way to gentrification, which has driven up housing costs.
Moton’s late grandmother lived on the Cottages of Idlewild site, raising him, he said, with love, wisdom and a firm hand. The park and basketball court just across the street is named in Moton’s honor.
Cottages of Idlewild is Moton’s way of repaying his grandmother and the community that helped raise him. The project’s name honors Idlewild, one of Raleigh’s earliest African American neighborhoods that became a “middle-class enclave of Black homeownership.”
“This is personal for me, this ain’t business,” Moton said in an interview. “I grew up right here. This is the [basketball] court that raised me. To come back for a community, take care of kids so kids can come back and take care of the community, that’s what it’s all about.”
Speaking to dozens of community members, business partners, members of faith communities and others that contributed in ways big and small, Moton said the folks in Idlewild had things money couldn’t buy such as morals, values, principles and a code of ethics.
“It was an incredible place to live and then in the mid-80s, something changed,” Moton said. “I was a kid and I literally was on this court watching how crack [cocaine] decimated our communities. It seemed like everyone began selling that drug to take care of their families or using it to deal with the fact they couldn’t.”
Moton and friends got the idea for Raleigh Raised Development after hearing that it cost nearly $400,000 to buy a modest home in Raleigh.
“I immediately thought about the people still in this community, even though I made it out,” Moton said. “There were people here that supported me, and they bought me fish plates and fed me when I was hungry and kept me when my mother wasn’t present. And so, just because I made it out, I couldn’t forget about their challenges and struggle.”
He noted that six people from his community went to college over a span of 45 years. Five were athletes and the one who was not became an attorney, he said.
“I hope they [children who currently live in the community] can look and see that they don’t have to dribble a basketball to get out of here, they don’t have to run a football or they don’t have to rap,” Moton said. “They can become developers.”
He leaned in on the growing workforce housing crisis that is bedeviling communities across the country.
“What good is the community, if the policemen, the firemen, the EMS workers, the cafeteria workers, the bus drivers — what good is the community if the can’t afford to live there?” Moton asked. “Through this project, we’ve created a unique public and private partnership that could hopefully become a blueprint to all of those in Raleigh.”
Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell said the city welcomes more affordable units. Nearly 30% of Wake County households spend 30% or more of their income on housing, according to the N.C. Housing Coalition.
Cowell said there must be more efficiency in creating affordable units, noting that it took dozens of partners coming together over a long stretch to get Cottages of Idlewild off the ground.
“I respect this is a blueprint and maybe now we can roll faster now that we’ve done one, but for me it’s the challenge of saying how do we do this more efficiently for more units,” Cowell told NC Newsline.
Cottages of Idlewild is being developed based on the Community Land Trust Model. Under that model, buyers purchase the home only and lease the land at a nominal rate for a minimum of 99 years. That ensures the property remains affordable. Meanwhile, property taxes are only assessed on the value of the home, which means that tax bills are lower than market-rate homes. Resale prices of homes are restricted to ensure they remain affordable to future generations, which creates opportunities for individuals and families to develop equity and generational wealth.
Kevin Campbell, executive director of the Raleigh Area Land Trust, said Raleigh is short about about 50,000 affordable housing units.
“Eighteen [units] is a big project but nothing compared to the need,” Campbell said. “That’s why this permanent affordability is so important because now we don’t just need the units because people are moving here, we need them because we’re losing them [people] also.”
Scott Farmer, executive director of the NC Housing Finance Agency, noted that a recent study commissioned by the, NC Chamber Foundation in partnership with the North Carolina Home Builders Association and NC REALTORS® found that the state has a significant housing crisis and needs 760,000 new housing units over the next five years to meet demand across its 100 counties.
“So, getting 18 today is a great step in that direction, but we have to do this on the scale and we need the resources and we need the commitments of other cities and counties like Raleigh and Wake County have done here to help further that goal.” Farmer said.
Several speakers noted that building affordable housing is difficult work. Farmer said that’s due to the difficulty of finding land on which to build such projects and rising construction and material costs.
“There’s no industry like housing where time literally is money,” Farmer said. “The longer it takes things to happen, the more expensive it gets over time.”
As part of the groundbreaking, Moton announced that sections of Cottages of Idlewild will be named in honor of people who contributed to his success and the well being of the community. It includes his grandmother and other community leaders.
One of them being honored is community activist Johnny Blaylock who lives next to LeVelle Moton Park.
Blaylock said he is proud of Moton and Raleigh Raised Development for creating an opportunity for current Idlewild residents to be a part of the growth the community is experiencing. The Cottages of Idlewild will provide that opportunity, Blaylock said.
“Although gentrification is going to happen, you can’t get in front of that train that’s coming — you know, that big money train,” Blaylock said. “What you can do, is get on board and be a part of that. So, I’m glad these young men saw that opportunity.”
