University of Virginia Library

The 'Mayor Of Garret Street',

By Marshall Allen
as told to John Taylor

Marshall Allen is a sixty year old
University employee; in his own
words, he is "a poor black." He is a
leader in efforts to improve housing
and general living conditions for the
poor in Charlottesville — and
Albemarle County. His efforts have
won him the respect of the poor,
both black and white, and the name
"the Mayor of Garrett Street."

As the name implies, there is a
separate city within Charlottesville
consisting of impoverished families
living in what A.C.L.U. associate
John Lowe describes as "some of
the most severe housing in the
nation." Marshall Allen's efforts
have included getting jobs for
people whenever possible, but he
has concentrated on upgrading area
housing.

He makes a point of being with
people all the time to find out how
they are feeling and what their
concerns are. He advocates
first-hand information, "People
have to get out and see what is
around them." Mr. Allen sees "the
poor man trying to build himself
up, needing encouragement, and
hounded by the fear of falling back
and failure."

Too often, this failure comes
because poor people are forced to
struggle just to get by. "People have
to live from day to day. If bad
times come they have to go to the
man (boss, landlord) for some extra
money to get by. Then pay him
back. Then 'cause their check is
less, they have bad times again and
have to borrow a little more. It's
like share-croppers, they get in to
their bosses and can't get out unless
they leave."

Why do the poor borrow from
their bosses in the first place? See if
you can find any alternative other
than hunger. Marshall Allen is
trying to find alternatives, as he
puts it. "I've always had my mouth
in something, and I've always felt
like I can do some good."

But progress has been slow. The
present conditions are insufferable,
and proposed solutions of Low
Income Housing, Hope House, and
Government Funded Housing do
not and will not work unless basic
flaws are adjusted. Some poor
families own their homes, but most
are renters, and many of the
existing housing facilities are mere
shells, rented out as long as they
hold together. The absentee
landlords are not only white pillars
of society, but also some middle
class blacks who Marshall Allen sees
as "fighting many proposed
changes."

In one instance, a black landlord
has an eight room house with a
family of five to six in each room;
for this he receives ten dollars a
week from each family. This $4000
a year rental unit is among those
pictured below.

Even more disturbing to
Marshall Allen than this sort of
exploitation is that when
infrequent opportunities come to
effect a change the white city
leaders have turned not to the poor
but to the middle class for
representatives of the Black
community. The poor resent this
for obvious reasons, but they get
very little notice.

ON REPAIRING EXISTING
HOUSES. Marshall Allen, now with
the help of Madison Hall's Work
Project Program, has long been
involved in helping poor families to
repair their homes. In cases where
the family owns the house, these
repairs have been beneficial; but
where the houses are rented,
improvements often cause more
harm than good.

To illustrate, recently a tenant
asked the landlord to paint his two
room apartment. The landlord
refused, stating that he didn't get
enough rent from the tenant to
warrant repairs. The tenant then
offered to supply the materials; the
landlord did it himself. The next
time the landlord went by the
apartment he said, "It sure does
look nice," and he raised the rent
five dollars a month. This is just
one example of the dilemma facing
poor families; improvements, no
matter how small, often bring
higher rents.

LOW INCOME HOUSING. Why, if
the present rental housing is
painfully inadequate, don't poor
families move out? Understand that
there is severe lack of available
housing, although in the Garrett St.
area there are several vacant houses
in reasonably good, or at any rate
better condition, which could be
used to relieve crowding and to
enable the poor to escape from
unresponsive landlords. These
houses are government owned, and
the government refuses to rent
them because they are in the area
designated for Urban Renewal.
Their rationale is that if these
houses are rented, then the
government would have to displace
even more families when
demolition and reconstruction
began.

As Marshall Allen says, "I don't
go along with it. I can't see it." If
Urban Renewal proceeds properly,
then decent low-income housing
would be available to all the
displaced families. If good low
income housing were provided, as it
should be, these families would
desire to move from their present
inadequate facilities when the
housing authorities were ready to
begin redevelopment. With this end
in view, the government owned,
vacant houses in the Garrett Street
area could be used to provide
interim residences for many
oppressed families. As long as these
houses go vacant, they are subject
to extensive vandalism, and become
useless even for temporary
occupancy.

Low income housing has its own
flaws as well. In one privately
funded effort, poor families signed
contracts and made down payments
for houses. Later, the down
payments were refunded and the
contracts were taken back for
various reasons. In one instance, a
man was told that he was not
eligible because he had no family;
another family was denied because
they had just had a baby, and the
landlord felt that they would not
be able to make payments because
of all the things they would have to
buy for the new child. The reasons
are many but the results are the
same: the really poor people of
Charlottesville have been denied
low income housing. To
successfully relieve housing
problems, a low income housing
project must sell — not rent —
housing to the really poor.

So far, most local attempts at
low income housing projects have
neglected these criteria and
consequently have not solved the

housing problem of the really poor,
who most desperately need it. Mr.
Allen emphasizes that this lower
economic strata in our area are
deliberately prevented from making
use of such projects because less
financially depressed families have
moved in and the belief is that the
really poor would abuse such
housing and decrease property
values. Unless this feeling is
overcome, low income housing will
remain unavailable to the really
poor and housing conditions in
areas like Garrett Street will
deteriorate even further.

"I would like to. I really would,
before I pass, see something built
where these poor people could live,
someplace, any place that's
decent." Marshall Allen knows that
it all comes down to people. As the
originator of Hope House, he has
started to help the children of the
poor. Housing also plays a role
because, "...Children must have an
education. But some parents have
lived in soil all their life and don't
care. It's a pretty hard thing."
Better housing will give these
parents a share in Marshall's hope,
and their children will have the
start that must be there to keep the
hope alive. Marshall Allen has called
himself a "lone stranger:" it's time
he had some company.