Samuel Grier, the tall, thin, Black elder who lives on the eleventh floor of Crystal Towers, has resided at Crystal for approximately two decades now. He is the son of distinguished firefighter Robert Grier (no relation to actress Pam Grier). Sam often wears overalls and a colorful skull cap. Sam has a quick smile and a very agreeable p… More
“The downtown area continues to grow; over 1,000 new residential units were developed over the last three years. And Jason [Theil] tells me that we’ll soon have over 5,000 people living in downtown. Can you imagine that? Years ago, we said that you could shoot a cannon down Fourth Street at 5 pm and not hit anybody. Today it… More
The City’s pricetag for the Flats at Peters Creek has risen steadily over the years. From a modest $15,000 (2016) for a study that got the project off the ground to $1.2 million (Forsyth County paid half of the $1.2 mil) to obtain the former Budget Inn property (2019). Then Shalom and its development partners returned to the City Council… More
A man was found dead Tuesday on the steps outside Our Lady of Fatima Church in downtown Winston-Salem. The W-S Journal’s John Hinton reported that “Michael Todd Smith, 60, who had no permanent address,” was lying near the church’s Cherry Street entrance when police found him unresponsive. No foul play is s… More
Looking through the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem’s meeting notes recently, I noticed the frank language HAWS used to describe its Housing Choice Voucher program, also referred to as Section 8. HAWS’ November 8, 2022, minutes tell the story of a housing voucher program that is difficult for people to obtain and d… More
The W-S Journal’s Wesley Young estimated a hundred people crammed into HAWS’ tent at the former Brown Elementary School on a chilly Tuesday afternoon. HAWS’ modest-sized tent was packed with local politicians, non-profits, and developers. Outside the tent, a group of protesters demanded that public housing … More
Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family. But with soaring rents and ridiculously high home prices causing housing precarity, life is not easy for working-class families this holiday season.
Like every other region of the country, the Triad has an affordable housing crisis. Winston has a deficit of at least 16,000 affordable hou… More
The Arts Based School has been successfully operating in Downtown Winston for two decades, just behind Lloyd Presbyrtian, in what used to be the old Depot Street neighborhood. This year, they began operating a second school at the former Diggs Elementary in the historic Happy Hill neighborhood. Recently they requested that the Cit… More
For nearly a decade now, there have been serious plans to ‘transform’ the Cleveland Avenue homes. The process of erasing the Cleveland Avenue Homes and building NEWside has begun. According to HAWS’ documents, the first group of 28 residents has been relocated. On Monday, HAWS Director Kevin Cheshire told HAWS… More
“How many housing studies does it take to build an apartment? I’m counting [that] this is the fourth study, not the third. And if we approve $322,000, we are approaching 1 million dollars spent on housing studies…”
-Councilmember Robert Clark, 8/8/2022
The Winston-Salem City Council’s lone Repub… More
