Standing their ground, getting new homes

MOUNT HOLLY "Happy Birthday, Nancy. We won!"

That was the message that popped up on Nancy Lopez's laptop as she sat in her hotel room in Florida during a birthday getaway this month. The five-word note from her lawyer signaled the end of a grueling 10-year legal battle over whether she would be forced to move from her home of 26 years in the Mount Holly Gardens.

"I was screaming," said Lopez, a former teacher's aide and mother of five. "I'm very happy."

The Lopezes are among 27 low-income families who had challenged the township's decision to redevelop their neighborhood by replacing their brick rowhouses with trendy condominiums priced beyond their means. Lopez and her neighbors said the plan was discriminatory because it would displace the town's largest community of Latino and African American families.

But some of the homeowners are not ready to celebrate, despite the settlement reached on the eve of a U.S. Supreme Court review. A few say they prefer to wait until they actually get the keys to the "replacement homes" the deal promises. That is expected to happen over the next five years, when townhouses are built in the Gardens in phases, and as money becomes available, according to the 111-page settlement document.

"They [the lawyers] say it's going to go through, but I don't want to get my hopes up until it's finally done," said Angel Vera, an auto technician who has lived in the Gardens since 1991 and who raised three children there. "There could be loopholes. . . . Nothing is for sure."

The litigation had put the residents on a painful roller coaster as the case grew contentious and rulings were appealed to the highest state and federal courts.

"We don't want to get too optimistic, because we have lived with this 10 or 12 years," said Santos Cruz, vice president of the group that sued for the right to stay in their homes and neighborhood. "Every time it would look like we were making headway, we would go back to step one. They [the town] wouldn't negotiate with us."

Still, Cruz admits the mood in the Gardens is sweeter.

"We see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said.

The town government said it wanted to get rid of the blight and crime that had long plagued the area, just off Rancocas Road near the county courthouse. Town officials denied any racial motivation in the proposal.

After announcing plans to bulldoze the 320-unit neighborhood and build about 300 condominiums and a small shopping center, the majority of absentee landlords sold, and open-air drug dealing disappeared.

But many of the tight-knit, working-class homeowners, who kept their children inside for their safety, refused to accept the town's offers of $28,000 to $60,000 to move out.

M. James Maley Jr., the town's special counsel, argued the redevelopment was needed for the good of the town and that eminent domain would be considered if necessary. He said the rowhouses were not worth more and refused to negotiate, saying the homeowners' demands for replacement homes or larger buyouts were unrealistic.

But after a new Town Council was elected, starting in 2010, it replaced Maley and focused on getting a settlement. Now, 20 families are expected to get "replacement homes," or townhouses that are the same size or larger than their rowhouses when the new development is built.

They will have to pay off existing mortgages and assume an additional $20,000 in debt toward the upgrade. Seven other families took a buyout tied to appraised values.

For some, the settlement came too late. At least five homeowners who were invested in the fight died while the court battle raged.

"This is one of the more heartbreaking cases I've worked on," said Olga Pomar, the South Jersey Legal Services lawyer who represented the homeowners. "I have gotten to know the clients so well, and it was painful to watch the neighborhood being torn apart."

The case started with 40 households, but as people moved or died, it ended with 27 homeowners and three tenants. The tenants will get relocation aid.

"I saw so much unhappiness. It's especially gratifying that we finally were able to work together to achieve results," Pomar said, acknowledging she had sent Lopez a birthday wish wrapped in the news of the settlement.

George Saponaro, the town's solicitor, said he was given "marching orders" from council to negotiate an agreement. In the end, he said, the town and the Gardens homeowners won.

TRF Development Partners, a Philadelphia nonprofit that specializes in redeveloping troubled neighborhoods, was called in to help. Sean Closkey, president of the nonprofit, said the key was to win the trust of both sides. TRF has expertise in raising money from private donors and applying for government housing money for development projects, but it couldn't begin to do that for the Gardens until both sides stopping fighting, he said.

"You have to think partnership and trust and have a vision," Closkey said.

TRF has raised $1.8 million to buy the land where 20 replacement homes and 24 additional townhouses are planned, with construction scheduled to start next year, Closkey said. When the settlement was announced at a Town Council meeting, Closkey said, several residents spoke about how happy they were that they would be included in the new neighborhood. "It was like out of a Hollywood script. . . . There was something Frank Capraesque about it."

Closkey said TRF still must get local approvals and obtain funding, but he is confident the plan will work, based on the nonprofit's successful redevelopment projects in Baltimore, Jersey City, and other places during the last eight years.

For Vera, the plan is a good one, but if glitches develop, he said he wouldn't mind remaining in his rowhouse. He has paid off his mortgage, fixed the roof, and put in new windows, and is able to ignore the half-demolished neighborhood once he is inside.

"I just need a place to live, and I like it here," he said.

Cruz said the settlement had given him and his neighbors peace of mind. In the past, the town would leave bulldozers parked in the neighborhood to pressure them to sell and move, he said.

"We just wanted to stay and be part of the community," he said. "Now we know when we see a bulldozer that they're not coming to just knock our house down. They're working on bringing us a new house."