THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701250292
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 48 lines
The sign in front of the rental office at Chesapeake Manor apartments is an understatement: VACANCY, it reads.
Jagged shards of glass rim window openings of the squat, cinder-block buildings in this sprawling, low-income neighborhood near the central part of the city. Vagrant strands of Christmas tinsel fly like silvery flags in the bare branches of trees overhead, and gulls pose vulture-like along the peaks of roofs.
Lisa Costen doesn't know where she and her four children will go after their low-income neighborhood is torn down.
``I'm looking hard each and every day,'' she said this week.
Costen, 33, has lived in Chesapeake Manor since she was 10 years old. She collects welfare for three of her children and child support for the fourth. She's a nursing aide and student.
A tin can rattles down Denison Avenue in the wind, and a thin strand of recording tape, loosed from its plastic case, wraps around the ankles.
Those who linger amid the rubble and desolation avoid looking at the big yellow backhoe that stands poised to gouge the sides of other structures. One building already has been demolished.
Just a few doors away, Joseph W. Parham's garden lies fallow for the first time in 45 years. The 76-year-old raised eight children in his little house on Denison Avenue and fed many from his backyard plot.
``I have nowhere to go,'' said the retired civil servant, surveying the patch of land behind his home where he used to grow collard greens, black-eyed peas, corn and other vegetables.
``It's a mess now. Why should I do anything now? I don't know where I'm going, that's what's puzzling.''
Sidewalks and lawns glitter with broken glass, and the reds and yellows of clothes flapping on a clothesline are the only color in this drab scene of washed-out blue and tan dwellings.
Clayton Walker, a 34-year-old divorced father raising two boys, said he called the city's housing authority to see whether he would qualify for subsidized housing. He said he was told that applications couldn't be accepted until the authority had been officially notified of the owner's intentions to demolish - and that that hadn't happened yet. Todd Copeland, Chesapeake Manor's new owner, has said demolition notice on any given building could come anywhere between 30 days and two years from now.
Walker supports his sons with a minimum-wage job at a car dealership. ``Trying to find a stable environment and one safe for them is rough. It would be nice if you got some assurance from the city.''