© Housing Assistance Council, November 1994

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SANDERS-BLACK APARTMENTS -- EUTAW, ALABAMA

Community Description: Eutaw, Greene County, Alabama

Greene County, Alabama, of which Eutaw is the county seat, consistently ranks among the nation's poorest counties. In 1990, 39 percent of the county's families lived below the poverty line. Families in Eutaw fared only a little better, with 23 percent living in poverty. As in other parts of the country, the elderly, children, and African-American people had significantly higher rates of poverty than other racial/ethnic and age categories.²⁹ A staggering 88 percent of women-maintained households with small children in Eutaw were below the poverty line in 1989. Given these poverty levels, it is no surprise that many households in the town lived in housing that was not affordable to them: almost one in four paid more than it could afford for housing. Analyzing the demographics of Eutaw and Greene County is critical to understanding the political struggles that emerged during the development of the Sanders-Black apartments in Eutaw.

Population

Demographic changes in Eutaw between 1960 and 1990 reflected several national population trends. Growth in the rural population of the South slowed during this period as a result of a national population shift to the West and slight rural-to-urban migration patterns. African-American people from the South also migrated in significant numbers to Northern cities, particularly during the 1960s and early 1970s. This south-to-north migration lessened in the 1980s, and showed signs of reversing as growin numbers of African-Americans migrated to the South from the North and Midwest.³⁰

Population and Housing Characteristics
City of Eutaw, Alabama, 1960-1990³¹

	1960		1970		1980		1990		Percent Change 1960-'90
	Total	%	Total	%	Total	%	Total	%
POPULATION
Total	2,784	100%	2,795	100%	2,406	100%	2,281	100%	-18%
White	1,130	41%	1,274	46%	1,114	46%	868	38%	-23%
Black	1,654	59%	1,531	55%	1,292	54%	1,411	62%	-15%
TENURE
Total Occ. Units	893	100%	na		906	100%	889	100%	-.5%
Owner-occupied	367	41%	na		652	72%	614	69%	67%
White	251	68%	na		369	57%	313	51%	25%
Black	116	32%	na		283	43%	301	49%	160%
Rented	456	59%	na		254	28%	200	31%	-56%
White	116	25%	na		68	27%	50	25%	-57%
Black	340	75%	na		186	73%	150	75%	-56%

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. 

The table above shows that after 20 years of decline in the number of African-American people in the City of Eutaw, there was a sharp increase (9.2 percent) between 1980 and 1990. The number of African-Americans as a percentage of the total population of Eutaw also rose during this period, from 54 percent in 1980 to 62 percent in 1990, while the number of white residents fell by 22 percent. The total population of Eutaw decreased by five percent between 1980 and 1990. Another significant characteristic of Eutaw is that it had a much higher proportion of white residents than Greene County as a whole: only 19 percent of the county's residents were white, whereas 38 percent of people living in Eutaw were white.

Perhaps the most significant trend in Eutaw between 1960 and 1990 was the large increase in the number of African-American homeowners. The number of African-Americans who owned their homes rose 160 percent in this period, virtually equalizing the number of white and black homeowners in Eutaw in 1990. This growth is indicative of a general change in tenure status in Eutaw: in 1960, only 41 percent of all housing units were owner-occupied, while in 1990, the figure jumped to 69 percent. Despite this growth, Eutaw had significantly lower homeownership rates for African-Americans than Greene County as a whole. In 1990, 71 percent of all owner-occupied units in Greene County were owned by African-American people, while in Eutaw only 49 percent of all units were

Household Income

The following table illustrates the tremendous disparities between the incomes of white and black residents of Eutaw.

Household Income by Race
City of Eutaw, Alabama, 1989

Source: 1990 Census of Population and Housing, U.S.Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

While the greatest percentage (24.1 percent) of white households earned between $25,000 and $34,999, the highest percentage of African-American households (21.6 percent) earned less than $5,000 in 1989. Fifty-three percent of all African-American households earned under $14,999 in 1989, while only 23 percent of white households fell within this range.

Twenty-nine percent of all people in Eutaw were below the poverty line in 1989. An examination of poverty levels by race shows that a significantly higher percentage of African-American residents of Eutaw were poor than white residents.

Poverty Status by Age and Race
City of Eutaw, Alabama, 1989
(Persons for Whom Poverty Status is Determined)

Source: 1990 Census of Population and Housing, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

Forty-one percent of all African-American people in Eutaw were below the poverty line in 1989, while only 8.8 percent of all white people were poor. The difference in the poverty rates of black and white children was even more pronounced: 52 percent of African-American children under the age of 18 were below the poverty line, while only 6 percent of white children were. Younger children experienced still higher poverty rates: over 65 percent of black children under 5 years old in Eutaw were poor. Elderly residents of both races fell disproportionately below the poverty line: 44 percent of African-Americans over 65 were poor, while 18 percent of all elderly white residents were.

Despite the high poverty rates in Eutaw, those for Greene County were even higher. Thirty-nine percent of all families in the county were below the poverty line in 1989, while only 23.5 percent of Eutaw's families were poor. The per capita income of Greene County, at $6,306, was also significantly lower than that for Eutaw ($8,812).

Women-headed households with small children had by far the highest poverty rates of all demographic groups in Eutaw. Almost 90 percent of all women-maintained households with children under 5 had incomes below the poverty line. This is the only category for which poverty rates were higher in Eutaw than in the county as a whole.

Employment

The county government and the public school system are the major employers in Greene County. Several manufacturers located in or near Eutaw also provide employment: Winchester Cotton, which employs about 240 people, manufactures boxes for fast-food companies; Vanco sews denim jeans; and a veneer mill outside of town employs an additional 80 people. Catfish farming is also prevalent in the area, with over 12,000 acres of catfish farms in the county. Very few small family farms are left in Greene County. Most have been bought by large corporate farms that produce soy beans and corn, and employ seasonal and migrant workers. Unemployment in the county was 12 percent in 1989, substantially higher than the rate for the state of Alabama (7 percent).

Housing Quality

Housing in the city of Eutaw was generally in good physical condition. In 1990, only three of the 870 housing units in Eutaw lacked complete kitchen or plumbing facilities. Housing quality in Greene County as a whole was significantly worse: 8.6 percent of all units lacked complete plumbing, while 5.6 percent lacked complete kitchen facilities, according to the 1990 Census.

Housing Quality Indicators
City of Eutaw and Greene County, Alabama, 1990

As the table above illustrates, the most significant housing-related problem in both Eutaw and Greene County in 1990 was affordability. Over 21 percent of households in both geographic areas paid more than 30 percent of their income for housing and housing-related costs in 1989.

Both renter and owner households in Eutaw had high housing cost burdens, especially those with annual incomes below $10,000. The cost burden of renters was, however, consistently higher than that of homeowners: of households earning less than $10,000 a year, 62 percent of renter households and 52 percent of owners paid more than 30 percent of their monthly income for housing and utilities. Housing affordability was also a problem for households with higher incomes in Eutaw: 21 percent of renters earning between $10,000 and $20,000 a year paid more than 35 percent of their income for housing and almost 15 percent of homeowners with incomes ranging from $20,000 to $34,999 had housing cost burdens of over 30 percent.

Extreme disparities between the income levels of black and white residents of Eutaw underscore tensions between the two communities, as do the growing number of African-American homeowners within the city and severe housing affordability problems. These economic quality-of-life indicators often have concrete social and political implications, illuminating the NIMBYism encountered by the developers of the Sanders-Black apartments.

Civil Rights-Era History of Eutaw and Greene County

The history of Eutaw and Greene County during the 1960s also offers important insights into the political struggles that emerged before and during the development of the Sanders-Black apartments in Eutaw. This history was marked by tension between the county's white political establishment and the burgeoning civil rights movement. As in other parts of the United States, conflict centered on systematic discrimination in voter registration and the judicial system. New political alliances arose to organize black communities and address the inequities, while white government officials in the State of Alabama and Greene County responded to these challenges, sometimes with dubious legality. Eutaw, the county seat, was frequently at the center of the tensions, as members of the black community demonstrated against voter discrimination at the county courthouse and Alabama Governor George Wallace filed suit to quash them.

The legacy of these conflicts remains in Greene County and in the City of Eutaw. Parallels can be drawn between the historical attempts of some members of Greene County's white political establishment to inhibit black voter registration and political candidates, and the opposition to building the Sanders-Black project within Eutaw. The NIMBYism encountered by the developers of Sanders-Black cannot be explained exclusively by the civil rights history of the region, but the struggle for political control of Greene County between the white and African-American communities in the 1960s frames the debate over the development of Sanders-Black in the 1980s.

Discrimination in voter registration was a rampant problem throughout the South in the 1960s. Greene County was no exception. Entrenched patterns of voter discrimination, along with evidence that county officials had consistently refused to register eligible African-American voters, prompted the Justice Department to dispatch federal investigators to the county. The Justice Department found that only 275 African-Americans (and 1,979 whites) were registered to vote in Greene County in 1962, despite the fact that Greene County was over 80 percent black.³³ Two years later there were 2,549 white registered voters but only 2,546 white citizens in Greene County.³⁴ A corollary result of this disparity in voter registration was the disproportionate number of whites selected for jury duty in county courts -- in 1963 only 5 percent of African-American people in Greene County was on jury rolls.

The history of Greene County is marked by consistent protest and social action to combat racial discrimination. In the spring of 1965, black students stayed out of school to join others in protest at the county courthouse in Eutaw against voter discrimination. Local authorities ordered out-of-town protesters to leave, but local people continued to demonstrate. The situation escalated when two churches, one white and one black, were burned down within an hour of each other.³⁵ The demonstrations in Eutaw became so intense that they attracted the support of Martin Luther King, Jr. In response to this national attention, and the presence of Dr. King, Governor George C. Wallace won an injunction in federal court banning civil rights leaders (specifically King) from encouraging children to stay out of school to participate in civil rights marches. These sustained community protests and the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted in significantly higher numbers of African-American voters: by early spring of 1966, the number of black people registered to vote in Greene County rose to 3,781, a figure that still, however, represented only half of eligible African-American voters.³⁶

Public education campaigns and organizing resulted in increased awareness and political power in the county's African-American communities in the late '60s. Black candidates qualified to run in the Democratic primary in May 1968 for four seats on the county commission and two on the county school board. Voter turnout, however, was less than half its potential in black communities, and white incumbents won by a large majority. In the summer of 1968, after renewed community education and voter registration efforts, many African-Americans in Greene County joined the new National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA), a large statewide political organization that sponsored 110 candidates for state and local office, including six in Greene County.

This renewed effort met with substantial resistance from the white political establishment in all levels of Alabama government. The six NDPA candidates were kept off Greene County's election ballot by the Alabama Secretary of State due to a technicality, an action the NDPA opposed in federal court. When the court ruled in favor of the Secretary of State, the NDPA appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court granted a special hearing six weeks before the election and overturned the lower court's ruling, ordering the NDPA candidates onto the ballot. Greene County's chief elections officer, Judge J. Dennis Herndon, however, again left the candidates off the ballot. After the election, which was won by whites, the Supreme Court ordered a special election, rejecting Herndon's claim that he had omitted the names because he had "misunderstood" the Court's order.³⁷ All six black candidates won in the special election, which was the first sweep of local elections by African-Americans in the history of the South.³⁸

The developers of the Sanders-Black apartments and several Greene County officials believe that the struggle for increased participation of African-American people in Greene County's political process in the 1960s provides a concrete historical context out of which opposition to the development of the Sanders-Black apartments arose. The continuing consolidation of black political power in the 1970s and '80s, and the fact that African-Americans hold almost all political offices in Greene County, they assert, has profoundly threatened the white political establishment of Eutaw. They believe that the desire of white city officials to maintain political control of Eutaw by prohibiting additional African-American voters from moving into the city motivated efforts to keep the apartments from being built within city limits, and from being financed in the first place.

History of Primary Development Entities

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), which developed the Sanders-Black apartments, works in the rural areas of 11 southern states to "organize poor people to address their own problems through self-help community economic development and public policy advocacy." FSC employs a comprehensive approach to economic development, organizing credit unions and cooperatives, preserving land owned by black farmers, operating a training and education center for grass-roots organizing, and developing affordable rural housing. FSC began its attempts to develop housing in Gainesville, Alabama in the early 1970s. It took more than a decade of extensive community protests, litigation, and the intervention of a senior official at the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) before the Wendy Hills subdivision could be built in Gainesville in 1980.³⁹ Since its inception in 1966, the Federation has developed three rural low-income housing projects with a total of 96 units, and helped many other low- and moderate-income people successfully apply for federal housing assistance.

The Panola Land Buyers Association (PLBA) was initiated by FSC in the mid-1960s as a response to the refusal of white plantation owners to pay black sharecroppers their portion of federal payments for taking land out of production. (Members of PLBA were eventually remunerated after litigation against the plantation owners.) Under the auspices of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, PLBA formed the Panola Land Buyers Association-- Housing Development Corporation (PLBA-HDC) in 1978 to help develop and manage Wendy Hills and future affordable housing projects in Alabama.

In many ways, the development of the Sanders-Black apartments in Eutaw is inexorably connected to Wendy Hills, not only because PLBA-HDC's experience with Wendy Hills helped provide the technical expertise necessary to develop future projects, but because legal conflicts between the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the Farmers Home Administration would eventually lead to the development of additional units at other sites. A brief discussion of this conflict will help contextualize the atmosphere in which the Sanders-Black project was eventually built. In fact, the issues FSC confronted through litigation against FmHA over the Wendy Hills subdivision represent the first NIMBYism encountered in the eventual development of the Sanders-Black apartments.

FSC Lawsuit Against the Farmers Home Administration

The original application that the Federation of Southern Cooperatives submitted to Farmers Home in 1971 was for 200 units to be built at the Gainesville site in several stages. Funding for the first stage (40 units) was granted using FmHA Section 515 funds. Immediately after the first 40 units were completed, the Federation submitted an application to FmHA for the next 60-unit stage of development. Farmers Home rejected the application, on the grounds that the additional units lacked sufficient access to amenities and that there was not enough need in the market area to fill them.

According to Cleo Askew, Housing Specialist at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the Farmers Home Administration never told the Federation that they would reject applications for additional development at the Gainesville site, despite the fact that the application for the original 40 units made clear FSC's intention to build more units in the future. Additionally, FmHA did not indicate that they would reject the second application until after the Federation had invested significant predevelopment funds necessary to submit a complete application, despite the fact that FSC staff had been in consistent contact with the Farmers Home field office prior to the second submission. Attempts to reconcile the matter were unsuccessful.⁴⁰

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives secured legal counsel and went through the Farmers Home Administration appeals process in an attempt to have their application rejection overturned. This took place before FmHA reformed the process in the late 1980s, and the FSC appeal was handled by the same FmHA staff member who rejected the application in the first place. After exhausting all appeal remedies, the Federation decided to sue in order to force FmHA to fund the additional units at Wendy Hills. During the course of the FSC lawyer's investigation, discriminatory lending patterns on the part of Farmers Home were uncovered and documented.⁴¹ The Federation and Farmers Home decided to settle the matter out of court, and the suit was dropped in 1982.

Mr. Askew explains that FSC's decision to accept an out-of-court settlement despite their confidence that they would win the suit was based on the fact that the law dictates that the winner of litigation against FmHA only wins the right to re-submit the contested application. (The law does not allow the prevailing party to automatically receive the desired funding.) In the settlement, the Farmers Home Administration agreed to fund 60 Section 515 units to be developed at two different sites (30 units each). Additionally, they agreed that 30 of these units would receive rental assistance. In return, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives promised not to submit another application for more units at the Wendy Hills site for five years.

The first project built by the Federation as a result of the settlement was the 30-unit Griffin-Mandela apartments in Greensboro, Alabama (Hale County), which was completed in 1987. The second project, the Sanders-Black apartments in Eutaw, Alabama, was to have been built before Griffin-Mandela, but repeated attempts to block the development kept FSC from completing the project until 1989.

Project Development and Opposition

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives experienced problems throughout the development of Sanders-Black. Arranging financing for the project, ironically, was not one of them. Soon after the lawsuit against Farmers Home was settled, FSC began working with Rural Housing Services, a subsidiary of the Housing Assistance Council, to use federal low-income housing tax credits to finance the proposed projects in Greensboro and Eutaw. After securing preliminary commitments from RHS and the Southern Development Foundation, FSC attempted to find land within the City of Eutaw on which to build the 30-unit project. While construction of the Griffin-Mandela project in Greensboro continued (despite NIMBYism), the Eutaw project stalled in the face of repeated site acquisition problems.

The Federation tried to acquire six different sites in the Eutaw area before they were finally able to build on the seventh. Almost all of the difficulties FSC encountered while trying to obtain a site for Sanders-Black were the result of NIMBYism. The Eutaw City Council was responsible for providing the most prohibitive NIMBYism encountered during the development, as it refused to re-zone suitable sites within the city limits to allow for a multifamily project. Farmers Home Administration officials also obstructed the development of Sanders-Black by rejecting suitable sites outside the city and by changing design specifications during construction of the project. Finally, some residents of Eutaw opposed developing affordable housing in their community because it would change the nature of their neighborhood. According to the developers of Sanders-Black and several Greene County officials, the sources of NIMBYism varied with the site, but in each instance the motives of the opponents were consistent: to keep low-income African-American people from moving into the City of Eutaw.

Site Acquisition and Zoning within the City of Eutaw

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives attempted to have two different sites within the city limits of Eutaw re-zoned for multifamily development. The first site that FSC attempted to acquire was in the eastern part of Eutaw on the corner of Roebuck and Finches Ferry streets. The site was on several acres of undeveloped land in a residential area, with established access to city sewer and water systems. This section of Eutaw consists mostly of homes worth $50,000 - $60,000 (which is high for the area), many of which are owned by African-Americans. FSC had an option on the land, but had to get it re-zoned because it was assigned single-family residential zoning.

The city government of Eutaw is organized around the city council and the mayor. The general duties of the city council include maintenance of the city's parks and recreational facilities, managing garbage removal and highway and road maintenance, issuing building permits, and overseeing zoning. According to Melvin Durrett, who served on the city council in the 1980s, there are three general types of zones in Eutaw: residential, light industrial, and business. The zoning process in Eutaw is similar to that of other rural communities: the city council appoints a zoning board which in turn makes recommendations to the city council.⁴² The council may decline to accept the conclusions of the zoning board.

During the city council meeting at which the Roebuck Street site was considered for re-zoning, testimony was offered by several middle-class African-American homeowners living near the site, many of whom were schoolteachers in the Eutaw public school system. These residents opposed the re-zoning because they feared building affordable housing would drive down the property value of their homes. Despite considerable support from others in the community, the city council refused to re-zone the site.

The second site that the Federation attempted to have re-zoned was in the Bynert's Quarters section of Eutaw on several acres of undeveloped land with access to sewer and water hookups. Residents to the south of the site were white, while those to the north were African-American. John Zippert, the Head of Operations at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, owns and lives on the land closest to the proposed site.

Mr. Zippert and Cleo Askew anticipated another major fight with the zoning board, and immediately began to organize community members who supported building the apartments at the Bynert's Quarters site. FSC staff members went door-to-door in the neighborhood around the proposed sites to explain the projects to residents, and to listen to their concerns. The community education and organizing efforts of the Federation were enhanced by tapping into established political organizations in the county such as local chapters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP, and the Alabama New South Coalition. The staff of the Federation and PLBA-HDC had worked in coalition with these groups before. These organizations helped FSC arrange community meetings in preparation for the public hearings of the city council. The community meetings were well attended, with as many as 150 people participating. FSC staff members assert that these meetings were critical for disseminating accurate information about the proposed project as well as to organize community supporters. Community members also made phone calls to the city council to endorse the project.

City Council Rationale for Rejecting Zoning Requests

Melvin Durrett, the President of Merchants and Farmers Bank in Eutaw, served on the city council at the time the re-zoning of the two sites was considered. Mr. Durrett states that the primary reason the city council refused to re-zone the sites was community opposition to the project. He indicates that people living around the sites were concerned about additional traffic and parking problems, and that the project would "change the nature of their community." He declined to comment on what specific changes the neighbors were concerned about. When asked if there was also community support for the project, Mr. Durrett replies that there had been some, but that the supporters "weren't homeowners and many were from outside the community." Their comments on the issue, therefore, were given less weight than those of homeowners living within the city.

Most supporters of the project do not believe that these were the real reasons the city council refused to re-zone the site so that Sanders-Black could be built within the Eutaw city limits. They believe that the real issue is simple political power. Booker Cook, the Greene County planner, noted that while the city of Eutaw has a slight majority of African-American residents, most are below the age of 18, so whites have a voting majority. Greene County Commissioner James Carter believes that "the fear [on the part of Eutaw's white residents] is there. When the political process changed here [beginning in the 1960s], and blacks got political power, white people became afraid" that Eutaw would follow Greene County and become politically dominated by blacks.⁴⁴ While adding the additional adult residents of Sanders-Black to the city's voting rolls would not put the number of black voters over the 50 percent mark, Mr. Cook asserts, "it would be close." Mr. Cook added that the same "institutional racism" that fueled opposition to equitable voter registration in the 1960s "still exists. The power structure is not interested in improving the lot of poor people, blacks in particular."⁴⁵

After considering several more sites, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives located a suitable piece of land outside the city limits. The site was very close to a HUD-funded development called Sagewood, which provides housing for low- and moderate-income families.⁴⁶ The Federation was confident that the Farmers Home Administration would approve the development of this site since HUD had developed a neighboring location. Farmers Home sent a field office staff member to inspect the site, an unusual event that FSC staff attributed to FmHA's supposed willingness to provide extra assistance in the face of the court settlement. Farmers Home subsequently rejected the site, claiming that it was not close enough to needed amenities. (Farmers Home later allowed white developers to build on the site.) John Zippert asserts that the situation he faced in Eutaw was a battle of "mutually competitive conditions." On the one hand, the city council refused to zone sites for multifamily development within city limits (and therefore close to services), while on the other FmHA refused to finance sites away from the city.

The Final Site: Highway 43

The Federation found yet another site just south of the city on Highway 43, and after negotiating with the local black businessmen who owned the land, FSC obtained control of the site. Because it was outside Eutaw city limits, no re-zoning was necessary. The Farmers Home Administration finally approved the site in 1987, after FSC had arranged for financing from the Southern Development Foundation, the Housing Assistance Council, and Rural Housing Services.

During the processing of these construction loans, FmHA insisted that Sanders-Black be reduced from 30 units to 24, claiming that there was not sufficient need in the community to justify the full 30 units. The market study commissioned by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives clearly indicated that 30 units -- in fact, many more -- could be absorbed by the Eutaw area market.⁴⁷ There was no enforcement mechanism in the original settlement between Farmers Home and the Federation, so FSC would have had to sue FmHA again to overturn their decision. FSC agreed to build four fewer units, which had little impact on the overall design and therefore was the least expensive choice.

Cleo Askew and John Zippert believe that this last-minute reduction in the number of units was yet another attempt by Farmers Home to destroy the feasibility of the project. They also feel that FmHA was trying to "bait them" into suing again, thereby losing additional time in the development process and threatening the implicit time limit of the out-of-court settlement. "We had been through so many problems," Mr. Askew remembers, "that we decided to go ahead with the project with fewer units than we had planned. We knew we would try to build additional units at some time in the future." Lowering the number of units, while decreasing initial construction costs, eventually also decreased the cash flow of the project.⁴⁸ Both Mr. Askew and Mr. Zippert felt that the most important thing by that point was to actually build some affordable units, not to risk the whole project. The next major obstacles to building on this site were related to extending sewer and natural gas hookups. The city opposed building the project on the Highway 43 site because, it claimed, extending sewer services would be too expensive. The city charged FSC $20,000 to bring sewer lines to the site, despite the fact that the city already had plans to extend sewer service down Highway 43 past the site Sanders-Black was being built on. Nevertheless, because, as Mr. Zippert recalls, "we had no choice," FSC agreed to pay the amount charged by the city.

A similar problem arose with bringing natural gas lines to the Highway 43 site. Traditionally, gas companies provide incentives to developers to add new units onto gas lines. In the case of the Sanders-Black apartments, the Alabama Gas Company refused to provide such incentives, claiming that the expense of extending gas lines to the site would prohibit incentives. Thus, revenue that the developers had counted on to help build the project were not forthcoming.⁴⁹ Loans from the Housing Assistance Council helped the Federation cover the additional costs incurred from extending sewer and gas lines.

During actual construction of the apartments, yet another problem developed with the Farmers Home Administration. After construction began, the FmHA engineer assigned to the project made several last-minute changes in the design, which cost the contractor several thousand dollars.⁵⁰ The engineer claimed to have overlooked necessary changes in the architectural plans, despite the fact that he had signed the formal design approval after numerous re-workings of the plans. Mr. Askew reports that FSC could have formally objected to the changes through a FmHA appeals process, but decided that additional delays in construction could cripple the project.

After overcoming years of site acquisition and zoning difficulties, problems with sewer hookups, and construction delays, the Sanders-Black apartments were finally completed in June of 1989.

Sanders-Black Today

The Sanders-Black apartments consists of 10 two-bedroom, 8 one-bedroom, and 8 three-bedroom units. During the first two days that applications were accepted for residency, 90 families applied for the 26 units. According the Panola Land Buyers Association-Housing Development Corporation, which manages the site, the only vacancies that occur are when residents' incomes exceed the maximum for the project. There are currently 100 families on the waiting list. No backlash against Sanders-Black, or the project's residents, has been reported since the project was completed.

Conclusion

Despite its eventual success, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives confronted NIMBYism throughout its attempts to develop affordable housing in Eutaw. Each time NIMBYism was encountered, FSC responded with a tailored strategy to overcome the opposition, using all resources at its disposal. Four general strategies were used by the Federation to surmount opposition to Sanders-Black: proactive planning, use of all available tactics and resources, compromise, and maintaining a clear focus on the goal. As the Sanders-Black example illustrates, none of these used alone will work. Rather, a careful combination of tactics and strategies has the greatest impact on a developer's ability to overcome NIMBY opposition. It is important to note that FSC was able to take full advantage of these strategies because it had the financial resources to do so. Perseverance pursuing funding sources was, it would seem, as important as any other strategy.

Proactive planning, enhanced by housing development experience, was an important element of FSC's ultimate success in building affordable housing in Eutaw. When FSC's application for adding units to the original Wendy Hills project was rejected, the Federation knew it was unlikely that the Farmers Home Administration would overturn its decision on appeal. Federation staff began preparing for the possibility of suing Farmers Home by retaining a lawyer at the beginning of the appeals process and carefully documenting all negotiations with FmHA. John Zippert says that having a lawyer involved so soon in the appeals process was critical to FSC's ability to ultimately win an advantageous out-of-court settlement.

The Federation's willingness to sue the Farmers Home Administration was an important element of its overall strategy to overcome NIMBY opposition. By acting on its threats to use litigation to overturn what it considered to be an unfair decision, FSC turned a position of weakness (having an application rejected) into one of strength (forcing FmHA to defend its actions and be held accountable for them). In addition to its willingness to sue, FSC was financially capable of bringing suit against Farmers Home. FSC assessed its ability to sustain a lawsuit before it began the process of developing Wendy Hills, thus turning what could have been a financial disaster into a powerful political tool. Many groups are unprepared to take such decisive action, especially against a federal agency, but it this case, FSC's lawsuit over one housing project made two more possible.

The Federation also used proactive planning during its zoning battles by anticipating conflict with the city council over building affordable housing within city limits given the political history of the town and county. FSC used all available resources during its attempt to gather support for the project, from calling public meetings that organized and aroused supporters, to going door-to-door disseminating accurate information about the project. FSC also worked extensively with existing political groups in the area. The Federation was able to tap into the organizing networks of local political organizations because it had worked in coalition with the groups long before the issue of zoning arose. Developers attempting to gain the support of community groups will have far greater success if they have well-established relationships with and have earned the respect of the local community prior to their call for help.

In each of these instances, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives chose its strategy with one fundamental question in mind at all times: what is necessary to provide more housing for low-income people in Eutaw? FSC used litigation when it was the only way to proceed with the development, but chose not to when suing Farmers Home may have won a moral victory but would have threatened the stability of the project. FSC spent an enormous amount of effort organizing community support for building the project within city limits when it was clear the city council was unlikely to approve it. Despite the fact that this effort seemed to "fail" because the city council refused to re-zone for multifamily development in the city, it paid off in strong current community support of Sanders-Black, full occupancy of the apartments, and political empowerment of local residents. By using every strategy at its disposal, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives was able to successfully combat NIMBYism rooted in nothing less than several hundred years of oppressive political control and racial segregation. As a result, one hundred rural low-income people live in high-quality housing that is affordable to them.

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