Mary Carey
Biography
Mary Carey was the president of the Garrett Square Tenant Association in the late ‘90’s. She moved into the neighborhood soon after it was built in 1978, raising three sons there. She was instrumental in getting streetlights put in and taking the gates partially down. She remains a strong activist in Charlottesville.
Audio
What was the Garrett Street neighborhood like before urban renewal? (Pt 1)
What was the Garrett Street neighborhood like before urban renewal? (Pt 2)
What happened in the 1960’s to African-American low-income neighborhoods in Charlottesville?
What do you remember about Miss Marguiretta’s house?
What was your uncle’s house like in the Garrett Street area?
What do you remember about Allen’s Store?
Did you experience racism growing up?
How did you come to live in Garrett Square?
How many jobs did you have to work to make ends meet?
How did you manage to get streetlights installed in Garrett Square?
What do you remember about when the fences went up? (Part 1)
What do you remember about when the fences went up? (Part 2)
How did you get them to open up and take down the fences?
What do you remember about the police shooting a man in Garrett Square?
Were the police racially profiling and discriminating against people?
Will intentional mixed-income housing work in Friendship Court?
Is the Section 8 system of housing broken?
What are the fondest memories you have of Garrett Square?
The Reimagining of Friendship Court
The redevelopment of Friendship Court is slated to be the largest new construction of low-income housing undertaken in Charlottesville in more than two decades. The plan alone is groundbreaking, having been directly created by current Section 8 residents in partnership with Piedmont Housing Alliance. City staff calls it the most nuanced and complex plan they’ve ever encountered. It ambitiously attempts to balance promises of zero resident displacement with the city’s broader affordable housing needs, while also calling for hundreds of new, likely higher-income, residents to move in, as residents hope to de-stigmatize the lasting effects of poverty born out of generations of racist government policy and neglect.
This year will be the make-or-break year for Friendship Court’s redevelopment efforts. Millions of dollars in city, federal, and private funding stand between the massive plan and the highly anticipated 2020 groundbreaking. And while the green lights have begun to align and most residents are excited, the plan has its critics — those who call for greater levels of resident autonomy, greater security measures to guard against social and cultural displacement, and greater reparations for past wrongs.
In crafting this project, we’ve tried to tackle all of this and more by separating the longer narratives into five major questions:
Part 1: What is the plan?
Part 2: How did we get here?
Part 3: Does mixed-income housing work?
Part 4: Who does Friendship Court belong to?
Part 5: What’s next?
But we also wanted to give you access to as much of our reporting as possible, so we’ve created a timeline that details the history of this area, dating back 150 years, through the use of more than 130 maps, documents, archived articles, and photographs. Similarly, we wanted you to actually hear each of the two dozen long-form interviews we conducted, and not merely the portions we’ve included in the individual stories. So we’ve included more than 300 audio clips throughout the story: in the articles, the timeline, and on each person’s profile page. Our hope is that with all this, more of the picture will begin to emerge, and that, as we stand ready to make powerful and significant changes in the city, we all can help craft the solutions.
