“Nah, they look like some going-to-school street punks,” said her daughter, who claimed a finer social radar.
They pulled into Linda Vista, a winding maze of 2,000-plus-square-foot homes.
(Nanine Hartzenbusch/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - Liza Jackson, 44, left, stands with her daughter Sheena Jackson, 24, outside the home she hopes to rent in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday, June 16, 2011. Liza moved to Charlotte from Hawaii in search of more affordable housing using her federal housing voucher.
(Nanine Hartzenbusch/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - Maria Oliver, center, eats breakfast with her children, from left, Jaye, Jantae, and Tania in their new home in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday, June 16, 2011. Oliver moved into her home in February attained using a federal housing voucher program.
“This is quiet livin’,” Jackson said, rolling along. “I’d hate to see something ghetto in here.”
Most yards were well kept, though a few were weedy, and here and there, vinyl siding was curling off houses. There was a Mercedes-Benz in one driveway, and old trucks and minivans in others. There were some vacant homes.
They pulled up to one, a gray three-bedroom with a white picket fence. They walked around the house, gold sandals in the clipped grass, and looked through the windows. Sheena was sure neighbors were staring.
Jackson knew that despite stereotypes people might have of Section 8 tenants, she would be an ideal neighbor for these economic times. She had cleared up her credit. She had savings, enough to pay her share of the rent in advance. She was upstanding, planning to attend school to become certified to draw blood. And once she moved, she would stay.
She was what Linda Vista needed, she realized: stability.
If Jackson decided to apply for it, she would contact the owner, Sabre Value Asset Management. The house, which the firm bought in a short sale for $90,000 last year, is one of about 150 it has acquired across Charlotte and Atlanta. All are rentals.
“Our goal is to try to provide a win for everybody,” said the firm’s president, Aaron Edelheit, describing the enterprise as a stabilizing force.
Jackson’s possible Linda Vista neighbors were warming up to that idea.
“I have nothing against Section 8,” said Cassandra Coleman, a homeowner. “Rich, poor, anyone can be a good or bad neighbor.”
She had been laid off from Bank of America for three years. Her mortgage was in trouble. She spoke with the sense that she could probably use a voucher herself.
Jackson realized that her own good fortune was partly due to such misery, but mostly, she and Sheena were thinking about a huge walk-in closet they’d seen.
“You know how many shoes you can put in there?” Sheena said. “I’m trippin’.”
After several days of looking, Jackson had seen at least a dozen houses that were supposed to represent the rewards of middle-class betterment but that were beginning to strike her as a bit shabby or “peasy.”
She did not want some of the peasy carpet she’d seen, or peasy refrigerators or dented, peasy front doors.
She drove again along Sunset Road, which she had decided was not peasy, at least not yet.
She drove by Elizabeth Oaks, one of the newest and most upscale subdivisions, where the builder had recently pulled out. The model home was now a rental.
She drove into Pinebrook, where one resident had dreaded the notion that a Section 8 tenant might move in. Others took a more practical view.
“If you don’t let go of your hang-ups, you’re going to be stuck with an empty house,” said Crystal Campbell, a homeowner who got laid off from Bank of America and recently found a job in the corporate offices of the Family Dollar discount chain.
By now, Campbell had accepted the revised facts of her existence. She could not move because her home’s value had dropped by half. Section 8 renters were not the enemy of Pinebrook but the friend. The house next door needed a tenant.
But Jackson was ever more discerning, and she wasn’t sure about Pinebrook. There were other places to consider. She had so many choices, including a renovated 2,500-square-foot “gem!” beyond I-485. With her Section 8 voucher in hand, she got in the sedan with the pink plastic eyelashes and headed there next.
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