STUCK IN NEUTRAL

For generations, economists, pundits, and holders of public office have told the poor that pulling themselves out of poverty was just a matter of acquiring the right skills, making the right choices, and having the right attitude. In a city where getting ahead is practically a religion, Cheryl Potts has done a lot right—and she hasn’t gotten far

- Pam Kelley

On a Wednesday morning in 2016, in the “Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World” class at Southside Homes, a dozen women made a list of daily challenges. As they chimed in about job stress and transportation difficulties, child-care costs and crime, Wanda Anderson, their facilitator, scribbled responses onto a poster labeled, “What’s It Like Now.”

The list grew bleaker with every term Wanda added—grief, loss, domestic violence, health issues, depression. One woman was in recovery for addiction. One had lost a lung but couldn’t quit smoking. Another, Cheryl Potts, described how she hid bouts of sadness from the three-year-old niece she was raising: “I go into the house and take a shower so the little one won’t hear me crying.”

Southside Homes was the oldest public housing left in Charlotte, with nearly 400 red brick apartments on 41 acres. It opened in 1952, when segregation was Charlotte’s official policy. A Charlotte Observer story from the time described the new South Tryon Street development, two miles southwest of downtown, as a “low-rent housing project for Negroes.”

More than 60 years later, its surroundings had changed. Luxury apartments stood in nearby South End. The Harris Teeter on South Boulevard offered a wine bar. Lenny Boy Brewing, with craft beer and organic kombucha, operated next door. But Southside Homes was much the same. Nearly all of its residents were black. Of those able to work, only 23 percent had jobs. Many came from families who’d lived in the city’s poor, black neighborhoods for generations.