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Martha Chavis has lived in public housing most of her life. She doesn't want to move out. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com poverty

Note: This is part of the series The Cost of Poverty, a look at Syracuse's poverty crisis.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Martha Chavis lives in Pioneer Homes, a public housing project. She fights with her husband about moving.

She wants to stay in "the housing." He wants to go to the suburbs, she said.

"He keeps bringing home apartment listings," Chavis said, picking up a flyer advertising an apartment in the suburbs. "I don't want out. I'm comfortable."

Chavis, 52, moved into the apartment four years ago when she was single and raising one of her grandchildren.

She's worked in the past, but depends on disability payments now after injuring her back while working as a nursing assistant. Her husband works at Costco in Camillus. Because rents in public housing are based on a family's income, the couple pays $562 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. That includes utilities. Chavis is doubtful they can afford much more.

Chavis lives in one of the poorest ZIP codes in Syracuse. The city received national infamy last year for walling its poorest residents up in the same neighborhoods.

Much of that concentrated poverty is where, decades ago, the government built housing for low-income families. There are 2,340 units of public housing, all in Syracuse's poorest ZIP codes. There are 2,243 more units of low-income housing that are privately owned but have been subsidized by the government. Those, too, are mostly in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Housing and Poverty in Syracuse 16 Gallery: Housing and Poverty in Syracuse

The first thing Chavis mentions about the brick apartment buildings on McBride Street is not one people might think. She talks first about how much she likes her neighbors. They have barbecues in the summer. She's planted some flowers. Pictures of her 18 grandchildren line a coffee table.

Chavis' life started in public housing. She grew up in Central Village.

"Back then everybody raised the child," Chavis said. And gun violence wasn't commonplace. "If you hit somebody, nobody was going to shoot you," she said.

The thing Chavis doesn't like about where she lives now is the violence. A block over, there's shooting all the time, she said. She calls it "Shoot-Out County."

Chavis said the violence was so bad this summer that she left her apartment to stay at her daughter's house for a while. "You couldn't even go to the corner store," Chavis said.

Chavis' mother left public housing when she and her sisters were teens, but not because of violence, Chavis said. She was worried about her five daughters getting pregnant. Chavis did at 17. And she dropped out of Henninger before her senior year.

Chavis had another child and married at 19. She had three more children over the next few years. She's moved in and out of public housing throughout her life.

It was not an easy path and there were bad choices, Chavis said. She and her first husband used crack cocaine for a time, she said. Their marriage fell apart. He was stabbed to death when her youngest child was 11. Chavis landed in state prison for a year when she was 46 on forgery charges.

Chavis said prison is where she finally broke free of crack. She's been clean for more than 15 years. She started to work on her GED, which she got at 49.

Now she spends her time being the secretary of the tenants' association and a community health volunteer where she encourages other women to get mammograms. And she takes care of her grandkids.

On a November afternoon, her son's fiancee stopped by with the couple's baby. She was on her way to visit Chavis' son in the Onondaga County Justice Center Jail.

"This is my future," Chavis said, as she held Katron Chavis Jr. She's not sure she and her husband will ever move out of "the housing."

They need a car. They need to be able to afford the heat. Utilities are included in public housing rent, but they often aren't in suburban apartments.

Chavis has made a life of making the best with what she has.

"I don't know where I could go that I could be so involved," Chavis said, ticking off community events she plans to attend. "Most people don't like it here. But I like it."

Marnie Eisenstadt writes about life and culture in Central New York. Contact her anytime: email | twitter | 315-470-2246.