Researchers Use Grant to Help Local Low-Income Neighborhoods

Janni Sorensen, geography and earth sciences, along with Jose Gamez, architecture, received a $25,000 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation as an outgrowth of their work with the Windy Ridge neighborhood, a northwest Charlotte community.

In fall 2009, the subdivision, built between 2003 and 2005, was affected by the foreclosure crisis with almost one-third of the homes vacant and almost 90 percent tenant occupied. Gamez and Sorensen, along with graduate and undergraduate students, developed a comprehensive neighborhood plan that included analysis of existing conditions and visions for a revitalized neighborhood.

The researchers and students initiated youth programming, particularly a “gang prevention” presentation, cookouts, movie nights and a visit to the University campus for team-building activities funded by the Chancellor’s Diversity Challenge Fund. They also helped re-organize the homeowner’s association with officers who live in the neighborhood and began researching the factors that led the relatively new subdivision to deteriorate so quickly.

Their efforts resulted in Windy Ridge receiving the City of Charlotte’s award for “most engaged neighborhood of the year.”

– Read about it in the Charlotte Observer.