Teamwork Makes A Community
“Sometimes, if you paint on a smaller canvas, you can make a more beautiful picture.”
That’s what Mayor Joseph Riley told me in his office here, just hours after he had announced that he would not be the Democratic candidate for governor of South Carolina next year. Riley was the Democrats’ leading hope to challenge Republican Gov. David Beasley in 1998, but the “painful decision,” as he said in his formal statement, was dictated by his family’s reluctance to face life in the fishbowl of a statewide campaign and, possibly, the governor’s office.
Riley, 54, has been mayor of Charleston since 1975, and what has been achieved here under his leadership is extraordinary. The city has endured much - Hurricane Hugo’s $2 billion devastation, the closing of the Navy base that was its biggest employer. But Charleston has double the population and six times the area it did when he became mayor; it boasts the internationally renowned Spoleto music festival; its downtown stores are thriving; and it is one of the nation’s favorite tourist attractions.
But it is mainly the way that Charleston treats the social problems that all old cities share that has made Riley’s long reign so remarkable.
When Britain’s Prince Charles visited the city, he went past the elegant homes on the harbor to the homeless shelter run by Crisis Ministries, a nonprofit, interfaith group. It is a spotlessly clean facility, which provides what former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros urged all cities to offer, “a full spectrum” of services to the men, women and children who, as the staff is trained to say, are “guests” in the building.
My guide, Debbie Waid, explained that the food is donated, the cooking is done by community volunteers and the residents keep it swept and scrubbed. But the mayor has arranged for all the support services - from the policeman on duty every night to the counselors who help the homeless get back on their feet. The soup kitchen and the daily clinic serve everyone in the city who needs help.
The other part of Cisneros’ dream that has been realized in Charleston is scatter-site public housing. In previously run-down neighborhoods bordering the historic district with its magnificent antebellum homes, the city housing authority has been winning prestigious design awards of its own.
Don Cameron, who has been running the authority almost as long as Riley has been mayor, showed me single lots, or two or three adjoining lots, where town houses or duplexes or small apartment buildings have been built so handsomely that private developers have snapped up adjoining property and whole blocks have been revived.
Driving with Cameron through the decrepit East Side, where freed slaves congregated after the Civil War, you could see where one freshly painted building, erected by the city or one of the many nonprofits that have sprung up in response to Riley’s leadership, is being cloned up and down the street with private capital, encouraged by federal low-income housing tax credits.
These buildings don’t resemble public housing. The porches, the materials, the roof lines all have been chosen to look like other Charleston homes. Riley’s dictum is that “there is no reason for government ever to build something that is not beautiful.” Even his downtown parking garages have won architectural awards.
Because the subsidized housing is handsome, the NIMBY problem Not in My Back Yard - has been minimized. Unlike the old public housing projects, with weed-choked front lawns littered with whiskey bottles, and beat-up cars at the curb, the scatter-site homes are scrupulously maintained. The cars are parked off-street, out of sight. The fences are posted against trespassing and the police see to it that vagrants do not loiter.
Riley has been at it for a long time and, with last week’s decision against running for governor, may be here a lot longer. His work has had its rewards.
When I asked him how he had done in his last re-election race in 1995, he said, “I got 75 percent,” then added with a laugh, “It would have been more, but we had a tornado warning in midafternoon and some of my people never got to vote.” But a more important commendation came recently at a fancy reception at The Citadel commandant’s home, where a woman serving drinks whispered to the mayor, “I’m moving into public housing next week - and it is so beautiful.”
Next week, the 19th International Conference on Making Cities Livable will be held here. They are coming to the right place.