LAST ONE STANDING

Future hangs in balance for Foote Homes, Memphis’ lone housing project

The Foote Homes housing project opened in 1940 during the days of segregation, and it’s served as home to countless African-American families, including those of civil-rights leader Benjamin L. Hooks and musician Rufus Thomas.

Today the development at the intersection of Danny Thomas and Mississippi boulevards in Downtown Memphis stands alone as the last of the city’s six large housing projects. The other five projects have been replaced with mixed-income housing.

The city of Memphis applied to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for funds to raze Foote Homes and replace it as it has the others. But city leaders learned earlier this year that they didn’t make the cut in a competitive process. The government plans to apply again by February for federal grant funding, said Robert Lipscomb, city director of Housing and Community Development.

“We’re hoping to replicate or exceed what we’ve done at Cleaborn,” said Lipscomb, referring to Cleaborn Homes, the housing project near Foote Homes that was remade as Cleaborn Pointe at Heritage Landing.

An overhaul of Foote Homes would not just change buildings, but would push out the people who live there, at least temporarily.

A coalition of local groups called the Vance Avenue Collaborative opposes the city’s plans. One of the group’s leaders, University of Memphis professor Kenneth Reardon, said the Foote Homes housing stock is in good physical shape, that many residents like the neighborhood, and that a demolition project would disrupt people’s lives.

His group has proposed limiting demolition and new construction and focusing instead on improving existing infrastructure.

Reardon said the members are open to compromise talks, but in the short term intend to oppose the city government’s plan. “They can expect strong community opposition being voiced directly to HUD,” Reardon said.

Little about Foote Homes’ future is certain, and for now, the residents go about their lives.

BRAD VEST/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Lucie Slater gathers her daughter, nieces and nephew as they headed to a peace rally in Foote Homes in September. “I pray every day that I won’t let my baby grow up here,” Slater says of daughter, Jaiyla, 2. “... I want to move away before she...