Blackland neighborhood going green

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Just across Interstate 35 from the University of Texas lies a neighborhood that once went to war against the University.

In the 1980’s, UT, hemmed in to the North, West and South, had its "Eyes of Texas" on its East Austin neighbors. The university wanted wide swaths of the Blackland Neighborhood for expansion. The local neighborhood association was in no mood to acquiesce.

 A little history here: Blackland, it is thought, got its name from the rich black clay that lies beneath the neighborhood. Industrious Swedes built the area’s first houses and farmed the good soil.

Later, however, City of Austin policies encouraged the relocation of much of the African-American population from its historic neighborhoods to the area just east of downtown. The blacks constructed small, mostly wooden houses in between the original larger Swedish homes. "Blackland" took on a new meaning.

 A community already forced to relocate once resisted the idea of another migration.

The neighborhood association formed the Blackland Community Development Corporation, a non-profit, to stand up to the university. With help from a $1/2 million grant, the corporation bought land and developed affordable housing. UT jockeyed for position at the same time.

The battle raged for a dozen years, until, as corporation board chair Bo McCarver remembers, newly-elected Texas Governor Ann Richards pressured the university administration to back off.

 According to McCarver, who in 1995 earned a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from UT, a truce restricted the university to the land between the Interstate and Leona Street, a few blocks east. The corporation received rights to operate in the area east of Leona.

 "They've been good neighbors," McCarver said. "They have done what they agreed to do and so have we."

 Since then, the Blackland Community Development Corporation (BCDC) has rehabilitated thirty-seven homes in the neighborhood. Nine serve as transitional housing for homeless families and McCarver says 183 such families have made use of them over the years. Six more are dedicated for rent to senior citizens. The rest are available to low income renters with minor children.

"We were childless over here," McCarver says. "It was elderly who were hanging on very nervously to their properties and a few of us who had just bought it; I was one of 'em."

 Now dozens of children and their parents call Blackland home. Their grandparents live down the street. Neighbors stroll the streets and stop to chat. Altogether, a quarter of them live in corporation-owned housing.

 "This is a very nice neighborhood," resident Lori Martin said, "(a) family-oriented neighborhood."

 That, however, is just the beginning of changes wrought by the neighborhood corporation.

Besides affordale housing, the non-profit pushes renewable energy. It’s most recent project, a house moved three blocks from the university’s sector, sports solar panels on the roof, a rainwater chatchment system for the gardens and a solar water heating system.

 To get sunlight to the water heating tubes, however, the corporation had to "decapitate" a large pecan tree. Rather than chop it down entirely, however, volunteers left the trunk standing.

"In restitution to the squirrels, we put three little squirrel houses up there," McCarver said.

Pointing to the duplex behind him, he said, "This is unit A (and) B."

Pointing to the squirrel houses topping the tree trunk, he added, "There’s C, D, and E over there."

Housing here is affordable for people and squirrels.

 Down the street, three children arrived from school. Asked if they like their neighborhood, they said,

"Yes, it’s quiet."

 At least it was, until the kids turned and broke into a giddy run toward “Granny’s” house, laughing loudly and happily.