North Memphis residents alleged Memphis Light Gas and Water property purchases involved intimidation, discrimination — which the agency has denied

After recent Memphis visit, a federal investigation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development into at least one discrimination complaint against MLGW is ongoing

The homeowner of 40 years who filed it was paid less for her house than her outstanding home loan; she agreed to sell after MLGW mentioned legal action

The purchases were made to support the expansion of the agency's North Service Center, due to absorb the operations of MLGW's 11.5-acre Beale Street complex

When 59-year-old Dorothy Ross and her children and grandchildren get to remembering their old house in North Memphis, they start finishing each others' sentences, tumbling from one memory to the next.

There was the Fourth of July Ross put a rented water slide and bouncy castle in the empty field across the street, for the kids and neighboring relatives, said Angelo, 12.

There was the entire room and bathroom his grandmother had added to the back of their previously two-bedroom house, remembered Kendrick, 19.

There was the smooth concrete poured the length of their lot, said Andrea, 16. That's where, one day after school, Ross surprised the seven children under her care with a family tree she had carved in the cement before it dried, including the names of each of the four foster children she adopted, and the three grandchildren she had more recently taken in.

A Memphis native whose parents lived around the block before they died, Ross had a method to the modest magic of her home.

A porch widened to hold bikes, a front yard made suitable for basketball, flowering bushes — each flourish reflected a simple plan, "just to keep them around," she said of the children. "I could see out my front door, watching them."

Plus, Ross had no qualms spending money on a house she never intended to leave. She and her husband had rented it in 1978. And then in 1980, when the house was up for sale, Ross' parents co-signed on the $15,000 purchase for her, a 20-year-old who made blue jeans at the Levi factory and hadn't yet established credit.

"I had it in my mind that I'm here to stay. So I did what I had to do to keep myself comfortable, to try to keep my kids comfortable, so I know where they at, keeping them from going somewhere else, playing. So, I decided to do all this to the house," she said.

But the house, along with its porch and patio, no longer exists, outside of an outdated streetview in Google maps. Neither does the neighborhood that used to surround it, just off Jackson Ave. and Hollywood St.

Except for the service center belonging to the city-owned utility company Memphis Light, Gas and Water, every lot is now an empty field. Known as MLGW, the utility company declared its need for Ross' home and other properties it's since demolished.

Ross held out for a year. But as the neighbors around her began to vanish and the utility company made reference to legal action, she sold in May 2017, walking away from her home of 40 years empty-handed.

"They only give us what they say our house was worth, no moving expenses, no nothing. It just knocked out my loan on my house and then I had to come up with this loan on this house," Ross said of her new home in Frayser.

"I'm in more debt now than I was over there," she said.

A federal investigation

The neighborhood sea change has been under review by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), given a complaint alleging discrimination filed in August 2017 by Janice Mondie, who lives one block from the demolished homes.

"Good livable homes are being torn down for old damaged equipment," Mondie's complaint stated, regarding Memphis Light Gas and Water's plans to close its 11.5-acre Central Shops complex on Beale St. and move its functions to the utility company's North Service Center — across the street from where Ross and her family lived.

"African American residential areas are being torn down for convenience," Mondie alleged. "This would not be allowed to happen if this were a white community with white residents," Mondie charged.

A few months later, Ross also filed a complaint with HUD — which prompted federal investigators from Washington, D.C., to visit Memphis in recent days, to interview her and other residents.

Because Mondie filed her complaint as a neighbor, whose home was not sought for purchase, HUD found her complaint without cause.

But, Ross had been pressured to sell, she said, by Memphis, Light, Gas and Water's yearlong mentions of legal action. HUD has, therefore, investigated Ross' complaint further.

The CA has requested comment from HUD regarding what follows findings of fault and, conversely, what recourse remains for residents if no fault is found. The agency did not immediately reply.

MLGW's former president and chief executive, Jerry Collins Jr., shared 20 examples of purchases from homeowners that he said showed the benefit to residents, at a public meeting, in August 2017. He also said 41 owner or tenant occupied properties were involved in the company's purchase of 130 total properties. He did not address the experience of the other 20 residential property owners but Collins asserted no residents would be forced to sell.

In April 2018, Mondie sought a meeting with the agency's new president, Jarl Young, after speaking with him on the phone. He politely replied the agency had nothing else to say regarding her concerns.

She's now hoping to hear from Mayor Strickland amid his re-election campaign for mayor. His Memphis 3.0 plan upholds home ownership and growth in communities, Mondie says, and she wants to know why what happened to her neighborhood was the opposite.

Asked to comment on the plan's inclusivity, John Zeanah, the Director of Planning and Development said 15,000 Memphians weighed in on the plan at public meetings over two years and made suggestions on improved walkability, transportation, infrastructure and "more housing options." Zeanah did not address home ownership or community growth more specifically, saying he was excited to see the "long-range" plan's results.

An MLGW spokesperson said Friday the agency could not comment on an ongoing legal matter, Local Memphis reported. To HUD, MLGW denied all claims of discrimination, according to a complaint report Mondie shared with The CA.

For her part, Ross holds out hope for HUD, still in disbelief over the sequence of events that she says saw her family pressured to move; offered less for her home than the loan she owed on it; paid zero moving expenses; and forced to take on bigger bills and new debt to secure a new home.

'Your property is needed'

Until June of 2016, Ross lived next to MLGW, unsuspecting what was to come. That's when MLGW said her property was "needed" in what "will be a cash sale."

"Presently, we need additional space for parking and building sites to continue providing quality service to the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County," a 2017 letter to Ross from a Property Manager for MLGW stated.

"Should we be unable to finalize the contract," the letter continued, "I will have no choice but to forward this matter to our legal department."

MLGW's offer to Ross was $17,900.

She owed more than $20,000 on her house, after the $13,000 room addition, yard renovation and the cost of gaining custody of her grandchildren.

"You mean to tell me I got to give up my property, no money, no expenses to move? I said, 'I owe more than that on this house.'"

Then, she said she was told she'd have to pay the difference between MLGW's offer and her outstanding loan. "I said, 'You wanna bet? You won't get it. I'll sit here. Sure will.'"

"Y'all don't want to pay me?" she said of an offer that would cover her full loan. "'You want me to pay you the extra [money] — to give you all my property?' What kind of game is that?"

The transaction with MLGW did ultimately include a $3,700 pay-off credit to account for the balance she owed on her loan. But Ross is not appeased.

As insult to injury, she says, her monthly MLGW utility bill is now much higher in the family's new Frayser home, as are the property taxes she pays, on a fixed income.

'It doesn't feel like home'

In the end, Ross and the children don't necessarily dislike their new house in Frayser. Their corner of the neighborhood seems as quiet as the semi-hidden street where they lived in North Memphis, they say. And the kids recently met other young people who live nearby.

But the house just isn't home. And their community fabric is no longer ripe with family.

"Everybody knew who you was," Andrea remembered of North Memphis. "If we ever needed anything, we could just go around the corner, talk to our aunt about it," recalled Kendrick.

"I'm still getting used to it," he said of the new house. "I'm so used to the old place, it doesn't feel like home. I was attached to that place. I grew up around that house."

"We all grew up in that house," he added.

Sarah Macaraeg is an award-winning journalist who writes investigations, features and the occasional news story for The Commercial Appeal. She is the recipient of the national Sidney Award, a Salute to Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Restorative Narrative Award. Macaraeg can be reached at sarah.macaraeg@commercialappeal.com, 901-426-4357 or on Twitter @seramak.