Outside her unit at Elliot Woods Apartments in Chapel Hill, Salima Smith gestured at the stairwell and metal beams underneath the landing’s floor. Despite a significant renovation to the exterior of the building in 2010, the coats of blue paint are long gone, and the metal is rusted to the point of falling off in chunks.
Giving a tour through the community where she has lived for 13 years, she pointed out apartments missing their screen doors, doors missing handles and cracks in the buildings’ foundation. She shared stories of leaks, mold in units, a maintenance man leaving supplies for the residents to make their own repairs, and the community’s playground equipment being packed away with little explanation.
“Everybody just kind of watches out for everybody’s kids,” Smith described of the tight-knit community. “And the kids all played together because they had a playground… but now, [there’s nothing.]”
From left to right: rusted stairs, cracks in the doorframe and walls, mold and uneven walkways at Elliot Woods Apartments in Chapel Hill are among the examples residents share of a lack of up-keep by the property’s owners. (Photos via Salima Smith and Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
The Elliot Woods Apartments and Chase Park Apartments neighborhoods hold an important history in Chapel Hill. The pair of communities were built in the 1970s as dedicated low-income housing by the nonprofit Inter-Church Council (INCHUCO), earning approval despite strong opposition from nearby residents who complained about the effect on property values and insinuated concerns about having Black neighbors. For many years, they represented an example of dense housing provided to community members who needed lower rents and proximity to their workplaces, which were supported by local volunteers and federal dollars.
The communities are still owned and operated in partnership with the nonprofit today – but with failing infrastructure and rising development costs, INCHUCO is preparing to sell the two apartment complexes after roughly a year of negotiating with a buyer. In the meantime, however, residents like Smith are sharing concerns about their own future amid the transition of owners and ongoing problems with the properties’ maintenance.
The playground and basketball goals at Elliot Woods have been removed, with residents saying children have resorted to simply playing on a nearby picnic table because of the lack of amenities. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Smith went to the Chapel Hill Town Council and spoke in public comment about the residents’ experience. Shortly after, on May 13, residents received a letter from Regional Property Management – who manages the site – describing a potential sale in the works and the buyer’s application for low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) to help cover “extensive renovations.”
Confirmation of a potential deal led Smith to call a meeting with media members and concerned community members on June 23, where she and others shared frustrations about how it felt to not know about the future of their homes. She said she believes it to be critical for long-time residents — a mix of people that pay below market rate rents and rely on Section 8 housing assistance — to be involved in discussions about ownership changes to prevent misinformation or a state of panic at Elliot Woods.
“The people who live here,” Smith said, “are everything from Board of Education employees to the people who keep your grocery stores stocked and shelved. We are vital members of this community, we contribute to the economy of this community, and we deserve to be treated [as such].”
One of the other residents who spoke out is Laila Bradford, who moved to Elliot Woods as a single mother in 1997. She echoed Smith’s sentiments at the gathering, saying the apartment community’s tenants feel connected as neighbors and celebrate how rich that makes them – even though they are aware of Chapel Hill’s broader lack of housing for their income bracket.
“People are no longer saying ‘low-income,’ they’re saying, ‘affordable housing,’” said Bradford. “But that masks the truth: I don’t get paid enough to go live somewhere else. I’m good enough to go work in the school district, I’m good enough to go run the board meetings…but my pay is not good enough to live here.
“And there’s a misconception,” she added. “When we talk about ‘low income,’ it seems people think that means we have low standards. No – we have high standards [for Elliot Woods].”
Salima Smith (far right) speaks to a group gathered in her apartment on June 23, 2025 to discuss ongoing concerns around the state of Elliot Woods Apartments and the property’s impending sale. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
In an interview with Chapelboro, INCHUCO Board President Simon Vincent acknowledges the communities need renovation – but he says the nonprofit lacks the funding to do another full-scale rebuild. The stairs to the first and second floor apartments, for example, have an estimated replacement cost of $200,000 and Elliot Woods would need to find temporary housing for affected residents, which Vincent says is not feasible based on INCHUCO’s funding reserves.
The wash-out of Chase Park’s bank during Hurricane Florence was a major capital project for the nonprofit, says the board president, and took several years to complete. More broadly, Vincent cites higher insurance rates, rising construction costs, the shifting federal approach to subsidized housing and financial challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic as factors that all exacerbated the organization’s current straits. He says it is to the point where neither property can afford another major cost or have their tenants face an economic downtown.
“And if that’s the case,” Vincent adds, “then the property would just go for general sale and [we would file] bankruptcy, and it would be redeveloped. So, to avoid all of that, we’re trying to put this in the right hands of the right people, and the mission of affordable housing in Chapel Hill continues.
“There are things that we would love to completely re-do, but we don’t have the money for that,” he says. “At this point, it seems obvious that sale based on tax-credit renovations with an incoming professional group is the only way to pick all of that [construction work] up and once again fix things so they can move ahead into the future easily.”
As part of its consent agenda during a June 11 meeting, the Chapel Hill Town Council gave preliminary approval to a bond inducement application for the acquisition and rehabilitation of Elliott Woods and Chase Park Apartments by Vitus, a Seattle-based private equity company that purchases and refurbishes HUD-assisted low-income housing communities across the U.S. Vitus has drawn both praise and criticism for its work – but laid out a plan to Chapel Hill for spending more than $4.9 million to renovate all the units after closing on the property later this year. In its application, the developer said it would provide residents with resources to stay in a hotel for between seven and 18 days while their unit is completed.
INCHUCO and RPM are hesitant to publicly discuss the sale, as such deals often are negotiated confidentially until they are formally closed. But both Vincent and RPM’s on-site property manager Tamu Coleman say the potential buyer is committed to keeping the neighborhoods available for low-income residents. And even though current tenants would likely have to reapply, Coleman says those already vetted by INCHUCO and who consistently pay rent are likely to stay.
“They don’t want to move new people in,” she says, “they just want to make it affordable – and yes, the renovations have to be done. So, the hope is to make the rents affordable and provide additional subsidies to make that possible. No one is looking to move anyone out of the property if they are a paying tenant.”
Even so, Smith says she is skeptical of what could happen if tenants are displaced to temporary living spots during renovation. At the June 23 gathering in her apartment, she said such tactics could easily push out long-time residents or be a way for new ownership to raise the rents.
“Statistically and historically, everyone in here has seen an example of that happening and people not being able to come back,” Smith said. “[Owners] do all of the renovations, and then they say, ‘Come and reapply.’ How do you tell someone who [has lived here] for 30 years they now have to reapply for their home? Are you kidding? We have got to say no – and I’m saying no today.”
In a later statement to Chapelboro, Smith added while INCHUCO may cite financial constraints for not making short-term repairs, it should neither “absolve nor excuse” them of their obligation to address any hazardous conditions to residents’ safety and wellbeing.
From Vincent’s perspective, turning over control of the properties is bittersweet because the circumstances – but he says he also sees the arc of the communities as worth celebrating. Between their creation at that point in time of Chapel Hill’s history and what he hopes new ownership could provide for tenants, Elliot Woods and Chase Park Apartments are established pieces of Chapel Hill. Their stories will continue to be written, just in a new chapter with the backing of a national company compared to predominantly local support.
“It’s the passing of an era,” Vincent concedes.
Featured photo by Chapel Hill Media Group.
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