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SAVANNAH, Ga. () — Residents are learning more about the future of a public housing complex in Savannah that will eventually be demolished.
Community leaders invited tenants to a community meeting Thursday night to discuss the fate of Yamacraw Village.
attended the meeting, but our camera was not allowed inside.
“It does need to be demolished. It does. It’s very poor conditions,” Morana Cummings, a resident of Yamacraw, said. “Mold, like the young lady said in the meeting, peeling tubs, it’s kind of crazy, little cracks, it’s crazy.”
The condition of the homes in Yamacraw Village is the reason that federal and local authorities have determined it would cost the same amount, if not more, to repair units than to replace them.
However, after the intention to demolish the units was announced, rumors began running wild. Thursday’s meeting was meant to provide answers.
“It kind of summed up what everyone was thinking,” Cummings said. “We all were thinking that SCAD was going to buy Yamacraw, and we were going to get put out and this, that, etc. That is not the case.”
Organizers said homes will be rebuilt where Yamacraw is now, but it remains to be seen how many of them will be affordable housing.
Community leaders said the 113 families currently living at Yamacraw would either receive a housing voucher or be placed in another public unit once demolition begins.
“They’re not going to throw you out, and they’re going to put you somewhere nice. So, you don’t have to worry about that,” Cummings said.
Still, some have concerns about not just where residents will go in the interim, but what the community will look like once it’s rebuilt.
“There’s just so much history there, and we want to be part of the preservation and make sure it’s not lost,” Anthony Maxwell, a member of the Yamacraw Restoration Project, said. “The people that we were talking to seemed like they were very in tune with trying to help the residents, and I hope that’s the case.”