Stephanie Watkins-Cruz interview with Kathy Atwater and Hudson Vaughan
Stephanie: Welcome to Housing Unlocked, the North Carolina Housing Coalition’s new limited series where we break down complex housing topics and explore advocacy work happening across the state to make housing more affordable and equitable. I’m your host, Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, Director of Housing Policy, and today is Part I of our discussion about property taxes.
Today, we’re speaking with Ms. Kathy Atwater, a long-time Northside community resident and Community Advocacy Coordinator at the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, and we’re speaking with Hudson Vaughan, Director of the Community Justice Collaborative at the North Carolina Housing Coalition, about their grassroots mobilization to make property taxes more equitable in North Carolina. Thank you so much, Hudson and Ms. Kathy for joining us today. We’re going to talk a bit about property taxes, but more from a personal lens. So, before we jump into that, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about you?
Kathy: Sure, my name is Kathy Atwater. I am a fourth-generation resident of the Northside community – been here all my life. Still live on the street that I was raised on, Lindsay Street, and graduated from Chapel Hill High School [and] North Carolina Central University. Worked with the University for 30 years, retired in 2008, did some other work before coming to the Jackson Center part-time. So I’m here now as the Community Advocacy Specialist and enjoy what I do here because it puts me back in the community and fellowshipping with those people that I grew up with, and getting to know new folks in the community, and just have a heart for this community and wanting to see it succeed, and the history being preserved. And I was asked to come on board by Mr. Hudson Vaughan, and participate in what the Jackson Center is doing to preserve this community, and really am thankful and blessed to be able to be a part.
Stephanie: Thank you. Hudson, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hudson: Sure, my name is Hudson Vaughan. I’m the Director of the Community Justice Collaborative for the North Carolina Housing Coalition. I met Ms. Kathy when I was Director here at the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, where we are doing this interview. The Marian Cheek Jackson Center is an oral history and community development center in the historically Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill, Northside, and Pine Knolls-Tin Top. I was really privileged to be a part of the movement for community justice here, and a lot of work, both to help figure out how neighbors could continue to stay in their homes who have built and sustained this community for generations, but also how to control the direction of this community’s future. And it was through this neighborhood, I also live in the neighborhood with my family. I have two kids who are being raised in the Northside, – the power of Northside, and a five-year-old who’s just started at Northside Elementary School, which is built on the site of the historic Black elementary school. The principal there actually grew up here in Northside and has deep roots here and so it’s powerful to be a part of the long legacy of freedom fighters in this community and it’s been a powerful home and community to be raised in. Myself, [I] really wanted to end up talking to Ms. Kathy more about the property tax work because in some ways, we kind of discovered this issue and challenges in the inequities in Northside together and have been a part of the journey before and since then, in different ways. Glad to be here.
Stephanie: Thank you, I’m glad you guys are here. It sounds like we could spend all day talking about this beautiful community. You mentioned that you discovered this issue together. Ms. Kathy, could you talk a bit about what you started noticing, what piqued your attention and why this property tax issue became more prevalent?
Kathy: Yes, when I saw the rise in property tax from year to year, and what started off with a property tax of $600 back in the early 1970s, rising to almost $4,000 now. And then, especially after I retired from the University and became on a fixed income, you know, pension and Social Security, and just seeing how a lot of that income was going toward paying property taxes, and that was a challenge for me at the time. Not knowing that if you don’t pay your property taxes all at once, then it starts accruing interest, so you’re paying interest on something that, again, if you don’t pay it all at once, it could just keep accruing. And if I was having that problem, then I couldn’t imagine what folks older than me were having. But thankfully, to the Jackson Center and Hudson, he was seeing the inadequacies of the property taxes from homes here in Northside to homes in other parts of Chapel Hill, newer homes, homes that probably had more acreage than what we have, but yet, not having that same impact as far as the increase.
Stephanie: What were some of your neighbors saying? What were people talking about?
Kathy: They were saying how they couldn’t afford to stay here because the property taxes were so high. I remember one neighbor right around the corner from me, she chose to sell her property and move to Pittsboro because it was cheaper to live in Pittsboro. And she was in her family home, so it was an inheritance for her, but yet she still couldn’t afford to live here.
Hudson: In those early years of the Jackson Center, one of the number one things neighbors shared again and again was a displacement pressure that was making folks feel like they needed to move out of this community. [It] was the incredible rise in the property taxes, and folks were seeing 400% and 500% rise in their taxes over just a decade or two. And I think that what was kind of shocking in 2021 and where Ms. Kathy and I kind of ended up getting involved in the inequities, is that we had worked a lot on figuring out ways that local governments and organizations like the Jackson Center could mitigate the rise of taxes, but we had never questioned whether they were done fairly. We had always assumed that that was just a natural part of the fact that it was a gentrifying neighborhood, there was market pressures that were forcing the rise of values, and that was still a problem. But we had no idea until 2021 and the re-eval that we kind of accidentally stumbled upon, the fact that it was not being equitably distributed.
Kathy: It was, even with that, as Hudson was saying, you know, we get the re-evaluations, alot of times because education is not there for neighbors to know when these things come in the mail from the town or from the county. Typically, you just pay it. You don’t question it. You think they’re doing you fairly, so you just pay it. But like Hudson was saying, is when we step back and take a look at it. Because even for my own self, I saw my property tax valuation saying that my house was going to be valued at $300,000. I’m like, oh, wow, that’s good! And then I thought, wait a minute, that means my property taxes […] [laughs] So no, that’s not good.
So again, as Hudson was saying, when we go back and talk to neighbors about that, and they were like, well, we got this information, but we didn’t understand it. And so having that educational piece as well, and as Hudson was saying, approaching the county, approaching these other funding agencies or resources, or just putting the information out there so that people can understand what this really means. You know, we can’t just sit back and let this happen, because eventually, you know, nobody’s going to be able to live here, because it’s going to keep rising unless something is addressed. And that’s what we’ve seen, you know, throughout our neighborhood, unless something is being addressed, then things just continue to happen. So we’re grateful to the Jackson Center and to Hudson, and for those who saw: “Okay, we need to bring this attention to the powers that be. We all need to do something.”
Hudson: Part of what happened is that Ms. Kathy and I wrote this letter to the county commissioners, because, you know, the county oversees the county tax offices, and the county tax offices are responsible for the revaluations in North Carolina every four to eight years. [We were] sharing some of these examples, pointing out some of the research that we had started. But the main response we got from the tax office at the time was, “actually we’ve done this fair and equitably, and we have our statistics to prove it.” And so then we kind of dug a little bit deeper, and that’s kind of when we realized that our 100 longest-term Black neighbors in Northside had actually had their properties overvalued by around $10 million collectively. And that it was actually within the same neighborhood that investor and student rentals – many of which were over double the size – some of which were far more than that actually, have been under-assessed. So the exact opposite, by about that same portion we were able to share back, you know, we said, you know, started this process to say, “well, is this fair and equitable?” And to show kind of houses side by side where it’d be a, you know, a three-bedroom home that hasn’t been renovated since 1940 that a same resident has lived in on the same kind of size lot as an investor-owned home that was built 10 years ago, that had been totally renovated that was twice the size, six bedrooms, and literally, the value of that older home would have been more valuable, meaning they’re paying a higher property tax burden. And it was really mind-boggling because we’re so used to hearing that Black property is under-appraised and undervalued when you need value out of it — when you need a home loan, when you’re looking, when you actually get an appraiser into your house to get your mortgage, that often, or to value your house for real estate purpose, that in those cases, Black property is systematically under-appraised. But actually nationwide, the problem is the exact opposite when it comes to mass assessment, which is that, in comparison to other properties, Black-owned property and lower-income property is over assessed, and so has a higher property tax burden, and it’s to a dramatic degree across the state of North Carolina
Stephanie: That burden is interesting too. So, for it to be when equity needs to be removed, for it to be not helpful, right? For that undervalue to be a barrier for whatever purpose they’re trying to take equity from the home, and then for the burden of paying into the system to be that burdensome. [Some] of the questions that came to my mind were, what are some of the reactions as you started peeling back this onion? So you’re processing, you’re discovering, you’re finding all these examples, and you’re talking to people. What were some of the reactions from both staff and the local government, the commissioners, but also community members. I’m curious how folks responded?
Kathy: So, as far as community members, again, shocked over the fact that their properties were evaluated in this manner. A little disheartened to find out.
“What can we do about it?” you know, “How? How can we address this? How can we reverse this?”
And again, thankfully to the Jackson Center and volunteers that assisted us and the outreach that was given for neighbors to come together and [say] “let’s just help one another in this.”
The county was like, “okay, well, you can do an informal appeal.”
Hudson: An individual one, right?
Kathy: An individual informal appeal. Okay, so what does that mean? I’m an 80-year-old person [laughs].
Stephanie: Well, right. How…
Kathy: [Residents were asking] “How do I do… how do I do this?”
And then that’s again, thankfully, when volunteers came together and we set up a whole organization, if you want to say, of people volunteering to help neighbors, to come in with the informal appeals, and like Hudson was saying, doing the comparison.
“How do we do a comparison?” Because that’s what the informal appeal was saying – “Okay, if you can show us a comparison of your property with some other property in the neighborhood.”
Okay, how is even a 60-year-old, 70-year-old going to do that?
But that’s when the volunteers came in to assist with that and we did over, what, 60 appeals?
Hudson: As a collective, we did 100 and over 120 [appeals] collectively. George [Barrett], the Executive Director of the Jackson Center, pulled together a coalition with EmPOWERment [Inc.] and [their Executive Director] Dolores Bailey and Justice United and the NAACP. And all those organizations got together and were really powerful forces at mobilizing folks.
Part of the challenge of the Jackson Center, of this coalition was, “how do we mobilize fast enough to get as many appeals?” but also not accepting that that should be the only route when this whole neighborhood was clearly done incorrectly. And so then we got all these folks going out to advocate that they redo the neighborhood and really look closely at what happened and what went wrong and do an inequity analysis. And so there was the successful individual appeal effort, but because that still didn’t reach a lot of the neighbors, thankfully, eventually there was some revaluation of the land value and some of the other inadequacies. And what had happened in the initial revaluation, those 100 longest-term neighbors, that value reduction will have saved those residents about a half-million dollars between the last re-eval and this upcoming one. And so it was a significant push, and it was … it made a big difference. And that’s actually what led me in the work that I do with the [North Carolina Housing] Coalition now, you know. I went back and studied for a year with UNC School of Government to try to figure out, “Is this happening in other places?” Like, is this a unique, you know, a unique problem and an example that was just kind of way out of line, or is it happening more broadly?
And I think what was shocking for me to discover is that Orange County is actually one of the more equitable [counties] in its overall statistics in the state of North Carolina. It’s one of 19 that actually meet standards out of 100 counties in North Carolina. And so in fact, many of the other counties are far worse, and many of our low-income and communities of color are paying over twice the rate that they should be compared to their higher-income neighbors, and yet those higher-income neighbors have about four times the appeal rate and success as a result. And if you can imagine a half a million dollars that would have been lost to this community, and you imagine that this is happening all across the state of North Carolina, imagine how much wealth is lost in that inequitable burden that many of these neighbors are paying unknowingly.
Kathy: The county realized that they were the problem, and so they came up with a tax program for all of Orange County based on the tax [assistance] application that we have here at the Jackson Center, and it’s called the Longtime Homeowners Assistance Program. That first year of that, when it first went out, people [were] not aware of what that was. They [the County] did not get a lot of response from that and so they were thinking, “well, maybe this is not going to work.”
But no, it will work if you get the information out to the people and explain what this is all about. And so the second year, they got more of a response, and we here at the Jackson Center, also gave this information out to our community. [We said], “This is in addition to what we’re doing, and please apply for it so that they will know, the county will know, that this is needed. This is not just, you know, something nice to have, but this is needed for the community.”
And so this will be the third year for their Longtime Homeowners Assistance Program. And again, we assist neighbors in our community to make sure they fill out that application and turn it in, because that would be in addition to what we are able to provide through the Jackson Center. And again, like Hudson said, because of the push for the county to do something, then they came together and brought forth this program.
Hudson: And then the power of that coalition was also to say, “Yes, property tax relief at the county level is absolutely critical, and we want you to be a model for that, but that also doesn’t fix the inequities in the assessment process itself, and so let’s do both.”
The state tax relief programs are very limited, and it’s, a lot of folks can’t, you know, don’t access them, especially in counties that have a little bit higher fixed income or two household incomes. Rising property tax burden in many gentrifying neighborhoods continues to be one of the number one listed pressures that folks feel as a displacement pressure and as a real challenge. How do we expand relief programs and how do we address the inequities? Because both are absolutely critical.
Stephanie: That was something that really stood out to me from what you said. So, solutions that address the sort of outcomes or results that were hurting people, that are applying pressures in the immediate or the short and midterm, but holding a government accountable to adjust their system, to adjust their process, and just how challenging that is. Because I think oftentimes, it’s really easy to get tunnel vision and how, and we’ve heard from other partners in our Coalition of how many people talk about how people don’t apply for their programs or tax relief programs, and quite honestly, a lot of people don’t know about it. So it’s the same problem over and over and over again, which is why the dual kind of parallel-track approach is so important, because meanwhile, you get that information out if that’s happening, yet the system and the approach still has to change.
Kathy: And the reason why a lot of people don’t apply if they know about it, is because they don’t want the government in their business,
Stephanie: Yes
Kathy: So that’s one of the things that people shy away from. [They say], “I’m giving out all my information, the government will know,” thinking that [the government] is going to cut back on what they’re already receiving, like if it’s Social Security or if it’s pension, or, you know, anything like that. Or, [they worry] they will be taxed more because they’re sharing their information. So a lot of that trust of the government is a big issue as well. And one thing that the county was also saying, that their hands were tied because changes have to come from the state level. So it’s like, “Okay, but let’s take it to the state.”
Hudson: Yeah, and I do want to point out one of the things I learned in the, in the work studying this across the state, and talking to a bunch of assessors who were really generous and offering their time and sharing their data was, I mean, part of the challenge for county assessment offices is that they really, they are given a massive task without a lot of resources to do it. And some states that do this better have a lot more resources and support from the state. They have whole departments, they have appraisers who go out and support local, you know [efforts].
The county governments and our state office that’s charged with that, the Department of Revenue, does a good job with what it’s charged with, but it’s very limited in what it can do. It doesn’t monitor fairness and equity in any kind of real way. It doesn’t provide any kind of support or accountability. And so, for a lot of these [county tax assessor] offices, you know, especially in more rural areas, there’s not a lot of capacity, Like, it has to be a focal point. It has to be named and lifted up from advocates on the ground, and then also, again, at the state level– figuring out ways to increase the infrastructure and support. Our state law says that properties are supposed to be assessed at 100% market value, and that’s across the board, and yet we have this huge inequity, and that’s not happening, right? And so, I think that’s a real problem, is if that’s actually in law, then we should actually have the support to make that possible and to ensure that folks are not being charged at twice the rate across our communities.
Stephanie: Could you talk about how other states that do better do that [property tax valuation] right? So they have the resources, or their scope is a little broader, so they’re able to hold counties accountable. What are some of the things that stood out to you as you’ve looked at other models? How have they differed?
Hudson: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think some of what I’ve seen is that some counties, first of all do, so they actually help with the revaluation process. They are staffed up to support it. They have appraisers on staff at the state level to support county appraisers, to help provide, you know, to do research around, because a lot of it depends on research into qualified sales. Like, “What actually is the sales data? What are the market trends in these neighborhoods? What are some of the differences happening between jurisdictions and areas?” and the state level is actually like staffed up to do that.
They have data analysis and support. There’s more comprehensive data for the state that is cohesive and that is not … doesn’t depend on, again, on limited city and county resources to maintain very dispersed data. So some of it is data support and infrastructure, software. And then I’ve seen also that they have, some of them have statewide offices that are actually looking at equity metrics on the other end and making sure that the counties, at the back end, that they’re actually following, that there’s not huge inequities in race and income and other … kind of the regressivity in the tax, in the property taxation, and they actually can help oversee and change that. And so they can, they can ask for, you know, sooner re-evals. Ours is still every four to eight years, which is really spread out. So it also means that it doesn’t advantage communities that aren’t seeing as much of a market rise. So if you know, if in rural county, it’s only eight years, and I understand from a standpoint of capacity why it’s only eight years, but if you’re thinking about it from an equity standpoint, in a community that is not seeing any rise in value or very little in that eight years, and another one is seeing 10 or 20% every year, then what that means is that community that’s seeing a huge rise in value is getting that amount of tax break. By year eight, that’s a significant margin of tax break in comparison. So it’s not actually really near, anywhere near 100% of that market value. And so what that does is, again, it disperses that. So some states do it every two years, but then they provide the capacity support to do that and the quality control to make that happen.
And then the other thing that I’ve seen a lot of states do that, you know, would have to be tailored in North Carolina, but I think is really powerful, is a much more expanded homestead exemption. And that’s not, you know, ours does have a great … for those who qualify, it’s a great homestead exemption. But you have to be 65 or older or permanently disabled, and you have to have a very low income, under $36,700 I think it was this year. But in other states, there’s a homestead exemption for your primary property up to a certain value on that property that’s across the board. So like, I think in Alaska, it’s like the first $195,000 of value for your primary home. What that means is that the hardest values to actually get accurately, which is the lowest amount of value that’s forgiven for everybody. And so then the property taxes are actually distributed at the upper parts of value, which means that both it helps with the inaccuracies and inequities in property valuation, but it also helps everybody, to an extent, but especially those who live in the lowest value properties or those that are in low-income communities. So there’s ones like that that have had significant impacts, and there’s a lot of resources on like, the Lincoln Land Institute around the power of broadened homestead exemptions and undercutting the inequities. I think Chicago and Boston both have programs that are much smaller amounts but are making a significant difference.
Stephanie: What’s interesting to me is that just in the last legislative session there have been several bills that have been introduced but have stalled or haven’t moved at all, that were attempts to broaden either the Homestead Act or like exemption, or add an additional protected class, or raise the income threshold. And I just…I wonder if you all have any thoughts about why those things aren’t moving?
Kathy: I was just thinking when we were talking about the homestead exemption, again, the…. lack of that, lack of information going to the residents. Because when we were doing the applications, one of the questions is, you know, “Do you have a homestead exemption?” And a lot of people didn’t know what that was, even though it’s on the tax bill. But you know, those fine prints – we just look for “How much I gotta pay?” and “Who do I send it to?” But again, through the Jackson Center, we’re helping people to be able to fill out those applications and then receive that benefit that is owed to them. But I think that’s probably one of the reasons why maybe the legislature or whatever does not push forward because they don’t see the need. Maybe not enough people have spoken out on it.
Hudson: And I say, similar to that. I mean, one of the things is, I think again, it goes back to this. You know how hard it is to wrap like because it is, I mean, I, for me, it was hard to wrap my mind around when I first started learning about this, that that tax value is, you know, even though it’s supposed to be based on market value, it always follows the market it, doesn’t create it, and it’s always out of date. And so your tax value is not your market value, and your tax value is not the same as your appraised value. And I think that that kind of confusion is really kind of mind boggling. But I think especially in heir communities across the state, it’s hard to challenge your tax value for being too high when you’re also seeing that your value is being assessed for too low. And I think that it’s like, I’ve talked to a lot of neighbors who, they experience that, and they’re like,”It doesn’t feel right that I’m paying property taxes that are higher because of this home down the street that’s totally different from mine. That’s brand new. And yet, I also feel like, when I’m being offered something for a sale, that it’s not nearly what the value should be.” And actually, both of those things are right.
Stephanie: What were some of the myths or sort of fact-checking that you had to do with folks. Like some assumptions that people had that turned out to be wrong, or some assumptions that people had that turned out to be right, when it comes to property taxes or doing this type of community work?
Kathy: I guess some of the, going back to some of the myths of you know “This is not going to hurt you or, or bring more concern or worries to you by completing this application or doing this or even doing the homestead exemption,” things like that. Like Hudson was saying, when people, when you get these phone calls, because that’s one of the things we do in our Keeping Your House a Home workshop, letting people know how to be aware of scams and things that, invitations that you get, [saying] “I want to buy your house.” Knowing that people, when they make you an offer, that’s not what your house is worth and helping heirs to understand too, the importance of having documentations in place so that you can determine what you want done with your property, you know should you pass on, if you want to leave it with somebody. So those, often those opportunities for people to know, “There are other options for you. You don’t have to sell if you can’t… if you feel like you can’t stay in your home. There are other options and there are other resources that are available.” So more of the educational piece, letting people know what is out there and from our standpoint, letting them know that, you know, “We’re here to assist you and to help you,” like Hudson was saying, “be able to stay in your home, stay in this community, that you helped build and that you want to leave a heritage for your children and your children’s children, and build that generational wealth,” which a lot of our people don’t have because we haven’t been taught how to do that. So just having that educational piece as well.
Stephanie: I’m processing what you said because I think it’s an interesting way to think, to invest in stability.
Kathy: Right
Stephanie: That I think if you get to focus on a formula or a rule, sometimes it’s really hard to wrap your head around also the different terms that you use are all terms that we hear all the time in housing, right? Market value, tax value, appraised value. And I just wonder how many “Aha!” moments there were, or realizations, like light bulb moments there were when people realize, “Oh, that’s not what this is. This is what this is.” And sort of how information can be weaponized, or lack of information is weaponized against communities, right?
Hudson: It’s interesting because what came to mind to me was some of the things we had to educate the appraisers about. It was interesting because I remember one of the appraisers coming out to me and getting them out into the neighborhood and the appraiser saying, “Well neighbors should be happy about their values going up.” And I asked back, “Well are the neighbors in Boundary Street, like on West Rosemary near the University, the white historic district, are those neighbors happy if their values have gone up?”
“Well no.”
“Well then why would you assume that neighbors here should be happy that their tax value has gone up?”
Stephanie: Right. So Hudson, could you talk a little about what scaling this work is starting to look like or your hopes for it?
Hudson: The Community Justice Collaborative is a new pilot effort of the North Carolina Housing Coalition supporting anti-displacement work across the Triangle in historically Black and Brown neighborhoods and a powerful kind of regional collaborative and um, with kind of strategies and tools to fight displacement and then also to build on the kind of collective power of these groups and their strategies to shape neighborhoods. And I think that one of those main tools has been to support these counties in the Triangle first with data analysis, appeals support, looking at neighborhoods trying to figure out where this is happening on the ground. Especially because Wake County had their reevaluation this year already and so we started that work with a coalition of partners in Southeast Raleigh who are really trying to bring long term neighbors together to have their properties looked at in their neighborhoods, and I can talk more about that and the successes of that work.
And then, Durham and Orange County are about to have their next round of reevaluations since the one that Ms. Kathy and I are talking about. And so part of the scaling up of that is to try to use both the model that the Jackson Center and these coalition of partners here built and now the neighborhoods. There’s a Property Tax Justice Working Group that’s developed in Wake County which has supported over 50 long term neighbors with appeals and about 150 neighbors with workshops and other property tax/justice education and advocacy support. And we’ve seen a lot of power and energy and collective change happening there.
Part of what we’re trying to do now is build a coalition of organizations that can share those models of mobilization with these communities that are having reevaluations coming up. And then we’re also building a data tax equity portal in partnership with DataWorks North Carolina. And then we have a number of partners that are stepping up to get trained and to support the appeals efforts and also kind of bring together a groundswell of neighbors who can advocate for change at the county and state level as well – who are impacted and who see this firsthand. Trying to support that process at the individuals, the neighborhood, the county, and then the broader systemic level is really the plan. And I think what we’ve seen in Wake County and now, as a result, will see in the sharing between neighborhoods and between counties – our hope is that we’ll really see a broader mobilization that can help power that change.
Stephanie: One of the reasons why this conversation is so important is we wanted to talk about ownership and wealth building in a different way. It’s really, I think, easy in the housing world to say, you know,”Owning your home is the way to build wealth,” and then you stop. And there’s not a lot of conversation around what happens once you own your home, what happens throughout the life of owning your home, what it means to be a part of the community, uh, what happens when you inherit a home? These are all a lot of conversations that not everyone gets to have but that’s a part of ownership that is, sort of, put on this pedestal but is also a really intimate and important thing in our society and in our culture. So this feels really important because I think it personalizes the actual experiences of people and what it means to own their home but also be a part of a community.
So I think one of the last questions I’ll ask you, Ms. Kathy, is, you know, why do you love being a part of this community and what does owning your home mean to you?
Kathy: Well, I grew up here, and [have] fond memories of growing up in this area. And um, I’m still here, I stayed because of my parents. They were elderly so I was taking care of them, and um, after they passed on, I wanted their legacy to continue. I wanted my family – because I come from a large family, um, like Michelle told you, I’m related to everybody in Chapel Hill [laughs] – so I wanted my family to have that inheritance as well. Um, and as Hudson was saying, there’s a lot of history here from our family. And the importance, it makes for a better society when you know your neighbors, you know the people who live around you, when you have fellowship and communion with the people that live around you. There’s safety in that because again, you know who is around you and you look out for one another. And that’s what I had growing up, [I] had the neighborhood looking out for me. I didn’t have to be concerned about where I went in the neighborhood or even in Chapel Hill because we had people that knew you and looked out for you. We’re in a society now where people don’t get to know the person walking right beside them, the person walking right past them. We have a society where people look the other way when they pass by, which really hurts when you grew up in a community where you did know everybody in your community. Whether you knew them or not, you still spoke. And I think that type of experience in a community is vital because again, if you’re having a situation with your home and you need maybe a home repair and you know there is a neighbor down the street that’s an electrician, like “Can I call upon them?” Um, [if] there’s somebody that does handiwork, you know, can I call upon them without going through these –if it’s minor stuff – you know, going with these expensive repairs and things?
But just having that… community feel, that neighborhood feel, that, it um …it changes the whole atmosphere. It changes the environment. It’s healthier. it’s not toxic. Because we live in a toxic world, so if you can come into your home environment, your living environment where you can get away from all the toxicity, you can replenish yourself, you know fill. All of us, being a part of a faith, we know that our relationship with God is important and having that… spirit of peace and love in a community, um, that’s what I love about the Jackson Center too because we are all about celebrating community. We have the celebrations that people come together and there’s no animosity, there’s no racial disturbances. All different races, all different nationalities, you know, religions coming together in a spirit of harmony. And that’s what I grew up with, you know that spirit of harmony, that spirit of coming together. You know, granted, there were times as a young person when you were corrected [laughs] and that’s needful and even having that opportunity to direct some young person’s path when you see them going in a way that’s going to hurt them, to be able to speak to them and say say, “Look, you don’t want to do that.” You know, having those mentors in your community, having those people that care about you and want to see you succeed, that’s what I loved about this community and what I’d like for it to continue, so that people will have that opportunity to succeed. You know, that legacy to come forth, to have somebody to walk alongside of you, to be able to be successful in your God-given gift or whatever it is that you have a passion for.
Hudson: You’re getting inducted into Northside Legacy. One of the things that our Northside neighbors, many of them multi-generational like Ms. Kathy, came together around was when we talked about like “What’s our slogan?”
Folks said, “We live close, connected and proud. We want to be close to each other, and connected to each other, and proud of the community that folks have built and that we’re sustaining.”
I’ll never forget Ms. Keith [another Northside elder] saying “We’re proud of this community again.” What we’ve seen in Northside is that folks have accomplished what many folks said is not possible, and that’s happened again and again across history, right? Is that Northside neighbors have bonded together to do the impossible or what they’ve been told they cannot do, or should not do.
Stephanie: I think it’s really easy in policy to start getting really cold and really technical and getting really “data, data, data.” And as much of a nerd as I am, I think this is why you do the work in the first place.
And that was Part I of Property Taxes Unlocked. Stay tuned for Part II, where we’ll speak to more organizers about their efforts to appeal unfair property tax valuations in Wake County.
