More Doors Closing on Working Poor

Once garden apartments like these disappear, he said, they can't be replaced as moderately priced housing at today's costs. He figures they were built for $10,000 a unit, including land. Now, "you can't build anything you can rent for $800, because an apartment will cost you $60,000, $70,000, $80,000."

Even as the last vestiges of normal life slip away at Hunter's Ridge, the ice cream truck continues to make its rounds. At the sound of the bells, Lisa Parnell's four kids spring off their front stoop, hopping up and down with anticipation. She fishes in her breast pocket and finds a dollar for them to split, and they scurry away.

"Every day when you wake up, you are expecting to see something on your door: 'We're closing down,' " she said.

There has been talk of this place closing for much of the decade Parnell has lived here.

She has weathered the demise of the laundry room, the closing of the pool, the dwindling of the maintenance staff. Reluctantly, because her children are thriving in their schools, she has searched for a new place, but so far she has not found one that she can afford or that has room for her family.

As the lights continue to go out at Hunter's Ridge, she clings to her home here.

"I've never been late with my rent. Even after the increase, I managed to come up with it somehow.

"They are going to plow these apartments down. . . . They won't think a thing about it. It's a shame."

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.