Landlords see value in commitment to the community
When I met Christopher Senegal, a developer who bought a group of Fifth Ward homes with the promise not to raise rents, his approach struck me as unusual. In an effort to keep tenants in place in a low-income area where he expects property values to rise, he found a property that included both rental shotgun homes, which generated enough income to cover monthly costs, and vacant commercial space, which could be developed to increase profits.
Anntrunette Wallace, a customer service representative who lives in one of the homes, called Senegal’s approach a relief.
“Your income doesn’t increase just because the property value increased,” she said. “So just having someone to be able to say, ‘I understand that need. And we’re not here to just make money, but we’re here to help you as a community’ — that’s a big thing.”
But as I spoke to longtime tenants, the property manager and a previous landlord, I found the details of Senegal’s plan — including his public promise not to raise rents for existing tenants and his technique of crowdfunding the money to purchase the site — were new, but the spirit was not.
In fact, Senegal’s promise to do right by longtime residents was a big part of why Birdie and Albert Stevens decided to sell the property to him in the first place. The history of the property, called Dittman Court and located on Lyons Avenue just east of I-69, shows why Senegal’s mission may appeal to some landlords as he tries to replicate the model elsewhere.
Birdie Stevens said her family first took over Dittman Court in the summer of 1976, when Dr. Samuel Dittman, after whom the property is named, asked Stevens’ father, Frank Adams, for a private meeting. Adams was a former sharecropper who at that time worked as a barber in the
commercial space Dittman owned in front of 18 rental homes. He often helped the families who lived behind his shop make repairs to their homes.
He would also help in other ways — giving out free haircuts before the first day of school and saving up money to cover the poll taxes of neighbors who otherwise would not be able to afford to vote. (Federal courts declared the state’s poll tax unconstitutional in 1966.)
Frank Adams, his wife Hester, and Birdie and Albert Stevens traveled to Dittman’s home to hear what he had to say.
“The doctor was very candid about the matter,” Stevens recalled. “He said the property had been in his family for several years, and he had used the property to put his daughters through college. He went on to say it had served its purpose as far as his family was concerned. And he knew that the tenants — the people, as he called them — he knew that the people loved my father. They had a lot of respect for him.”
Dittman offered to sell the property to the Adamses. When Hester Adams protested they did not have the money, he said he’d already thought that through.
“He said, ‘We will finance this loan, if you agree to take it on. All we want you to do is take it and run with it,’” Stevens said.
While many landlords in Houston offered Black families unfavorable financial arrangements with terms meant to prevent them from ever taking full possession of the their deeds, according to government reports, Dittman was as good as his word. The Adamses closed on the Dittman Court in 1976.
And the Adamses did run with it, and managed the property until Frank Adams became ill. Then the couple turned the property over to Birdie and Albert Stevens to look after. For Birdie Stevens, that meant working with some families she had known since she was young.
“We grew up knowing the people’s names,” Stevens said.
“And when we took over the property, some of the people were still there. Like Miss Taylor — her little boy was just a small boy when she moved there.”
Stevens said she sent out letters with a small gift every Christmas, to thank them for being good tenants.
“You can’t tell the story of Dittman without telling the story of the people. Because they make it. they made it what it is,” she said. “We’ve been to funerals. We go to weddings. We bring baby gifts.”
In Fifth Ward, as in other lowincome neighborhoods close to downtown, many property owners are used to robocalls from investors trying to buy at low prices. So when Senegal’s team reached out to the Stevenses, Birdie Stevens was surprised to hear Senegal’s vision for the community.
“He said, ‘I’m not here to buy property and jack up rents. We’re here to build the community up, not tear it down,’” she recalled. “We hung up and said, ‘Dang. That sounds like us.’”
For landlords like the Stevenses, and the Adamses before them and Dittman before them, it’s important for properties to go to someone with a commitment to the people who live there.
“I can make a dollar no matter what,” Birdie Stevens said. “But what we can’t make is a good community.”