Just about every week since August of 2018, Yugonda Sample-Jones has knocked on doors in the Ridley Place neighborhood of southeast Newport News to distribute information about resources and impending changes to the community.
Months later, she still comes across people who don’t know about some service, event or opportunity and some who haven’t heard about the planned destruction and redevelopment of the housing units.
As part of the Choice Neighborhood Initiative, the city and Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority have created a plan to transform Ridley Place, Marshall Courts and the nearby and surrounding areas. The development of the plan has included plenty of community input, but some people have slipped past.
“That’s why we do this,” said Sample-Jones, who works with the Hampton Roads Community Action Program as an AmeriCorps Volunteer in Service to America, or VISTA. Keeping the residents informed is a step toward empowering them and helping them develop goals and dreams, she said. It also helps prevent them being surprised when big changes start rolling through the neighborhood.
Sample-Jones is often joined by other volunteers, area residents and interns to distribute fliers to each of more than 250 homes in Ridley. This week’s fliers include information about a job fair, the Summer Training and Enrichment Program for high school students and young adults, and information about a new lawn care company, including a reminder to bring in hang-drying laundry the days the company mows.
Some will get mad at Sample-Jones or her team for knocking, and some people never answer — they get fliers taped to their doors. Many are glad to chat with the visitors.
Christophena Tynes had never heard about Choice Neighborhoods and didn’t know plans called for her home to come down in a few years. After a conversation about the plan, Tynes gave Sample-Jones a hug and invited her to a Saturday performance of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” at Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center. Tynes said it was her first time doing any type of theater.
She said she was glad to learn about CNI and said she hoped changes were made expeditiously because the area is in need of uplifting. Tynes, who dreams of opening a restaurant, said she’s been in Newport News about her whole life and wanted to see more opportunities in the community.
Sample-Jones, who lives near Ridley, said CNI has given people in the southeast an opportunity to speak up for themselves. She highlighted one resident who wasn’t one to speak up before but got active in CNI and will serve on the an advisory committee, representing Ridley residents as the city and redevelopment and housing authority carry out the transformation plan.
On her walks, Sample-Jones fields a fair amount of concerns and complaints and points people to the right staff member or service location. As Dorothy Hill hung up linens to dry, Sample-Jones promised to help get an issue fixed at her home and also arranged to pick up some of Hill’s cooking later.
She’s gotten to know many of the residents over the past few months and knows who’s experienced trauma or is taking care of an ailing relative. She knows which residents can’t read and need her to explain what’s on the fliers.
“The individual level is key,” Sample-Jones said. One of the central tenets of CNI transformation is the people it impacts — while plans present a big picture for change, connections with individuals can’t be forgotten, she said.
One of Sample-Jones’ concerns is that the people in the neighborhood will leave as Ridley is torn down and rebuilt and then not come back. Current residents will have first priority on the new housing, and many residents, like Hill, have been in the community their whole lives, have deep roots in the area and would never choose to leave.
Sample-Jones hopes that keeping everyone informed will help keep them around.
Newport News is one of four finalists for implementation funding of its transformation plan along with Norfolk; Baton Rouge, La.; and Omaha, Neb. The city could receive up to $30 million to implement its transformation plan.
The target area for transformation in Marshall-Ridley goes from 39th Street to the north, Hampton Roads Harbor to the south, Interstate 664 to the west, and Marshall Avenue and the former Chase Bag property to the east.
In the Marshall-Ridley area, 61% of homes are either public or Section 8 units, and there are no market-rate apartments within the neighborhood.
