Every fall, UNC-Chapel Hill students move off-campus and into properties within the surrounding town. Over the years, these student renters have remained a consistent presence within historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill as they become part of a history they know very little about – shifting the dynamic of the once close-knit community.
Student Presence
Northside, one of the oldest historically Black communities in Chapel Hill, was founded during the construction of UNC in the 1800s and was inhabited by enslaved African Americans who built the University.
Delores Bailey, a lifelong community member, has seen the growing tensions between students and longtime Northside residents.
"I'm not going to get up off of my porch and come over and try to talk to you because I don't know how you're going to receive me," she said. "So, we've built up really good excuses for not being good neighbors."
Bailey grew up right outside of Chapel Hill in a predominantly Black neighborhood, but in high school, her household and around 70 others were forced to leave due to the building of the Jordan Dam. Her family moved to Graham Street in Chapel Hill and they have had a strong connection to the Black community in the area.
Over the years, Bailey has felt the effects of student renters in Chapel Hill, including an increase in her taxes due to the construction of two residential towers known as Greenbridge at the top of Graham Street.
The Marian Cheek Jackson Center, in the Northside Community, is dedicated to preserving the history and future of historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. One of the ways they achieve this goal is by encouraging UNC students to take a more active role in the community and recognize their place within its history.
Gillian Kepley, a UNC student, is serving as a Northside Fellow at the Jackson Center this summer to help coordinate volunteers and motivate other students to be good neighbors.
"Even though the students themselves might change every couple of years, the fact of the matter is students are present," Kepley said.
When walking through Northside today, Kepley said you can definitely pick out which homes are student rentals and which actually belong to long-term residents. Some of these newly renovated properties had trash sitting out front while noisy construction could be heard through much of the neighborhood.
Northside Neighborhood Initiative
Many of the homes in Northside have been passed down for generations and permanent residents have long been worried about being pushed out of their homes and losing the character of their community.
From 1989 to 2010, the Black population in Northside decreased by more than 40%. This was in direct proportion to the rise in white residents, many of whom were UNC students.
"The concern is that if people have to leave here, there aren't really many options of places for them to go, so they'd have to leave the community and most people who have lived here a long time don't want to leave," Loryn Clark, the deputy town manager of Chapel Hill, said. "They want to stay here."
To address these concerns, the Northside Neighborhood Initiative was launched in 2015 as a joint collaboration between the Jackson Center, the Center for Community Self-Help, the Town of Chapel Hill, and UNC Chapel Hill. The goal of this initiative is to help long-term residents remain in their homes, attract new residents from diverse backgrounds, and increase the availability of housing and financing options for neighborhood properties.
Clark said the push came from long-term residents who have been working on issues of revitalization along with community development and engagement for years.
One of the main efforts of the initiative, she said, has been building a landbank of homes purchased by the Jackson Center that are selected by a compass group of these long-term residents.
The land bank has made it possible to hold on to properties with no immediate plan or buyer in order to turn them into long-term affordable homeownership opportunities, Clark said. Some funding has also gone to assistance for residents to pay their property taxes – which have increased due to new rental properties.
Since 2015, The Northside Neighborhood Initiative has secured 45 homes in its landbank and is working to add more.
Clark also said that a conservation district was established in 2004 that continues to regulate the size of homes that can be built within Northside – another way of mitigating the impacts of developers in the area.
And the efforts are working. As of 2017, Northside saw an increase in its Black population for the first time in 40 years.
Student Engagement
As Aaron Bachenheimer, the vice chancellor of off-campus affairs at UNC, puts it, the University has always been the 800-pound elephant in Chapel Hill. He said this means UNC has a responsibility to educate students to ensure they have a positive impact on their community.
"I talk about things like hearing from families about how hard it is, for them to explain to their small children, as they're walking them to Northside Elementary School, past vomit in the street, or trash in the street, or a student who's passed out in the front yard of a house," Bachenhemier said.
One major way UNC is working to mitigate these issues is through an initiative to encourage students to register their off-campus parties. This is a system for students to inform the University and local police departments when they plan to have a gathering in their homes. If the police do get a call about a disruptive party, the host gets a text or phone call as a first warning – giving them an opportunity to settle down without the police showing up.
Bachenheimer said this program has been a win-win-win scenario as students are given good information about how to party safely without drawing unwanted attention, local law enforcement doesn't have to dispatch resources, and residents have their issues solved while also keeping police out of their neighborhood.
Along with a decline in overall nuisance complaints, he said the program has also seen tremendous growth in utilization with around 500 parties registered last year.
Bachenheimer said he hopes the University's efforts help students develop the necessary perspective to remember that they're part of the community.
Looking Ahead
All the effort and energy the University and community put into these initiatives they have made some small impact. However, Delores Bailey said, only a select few students actually participate.
These experiences, she said, have greatly influenced her work as the executive director of EMPOWERment – a local nonprofit dedicated to helping underserved residents of Orange County. In this role, she helps to provide community members with resources, invest in affordable housing and teach people how to advocate for themselves to combat gentrification within the neighborhoods.
One thing Bailey emphasized is that she wants to take away the stereotype that long-term community members don't want students in their neighborhoods. She said all she has ever wanted from student renters is to become active members of the community, yet she has not seen that.
As students graduate and move away from Chapel Hill, turnover rates are high in these rental properties making the continuous education and push for community involvement increasingly more important.
"The students that I see, it almost feels like I'm offending them if I speak to them," Bailey said. "So I don't, and I'd like to see that change before the neighborhood completely gets flipped to all students."
