At Parkview Arms, residents strive to build a sense of community

It’s lunchtime on Wednesday, and Rebecca Smith, branch manager of Oxford Lane Library, has just rolled into the parking lot of Parkview Arms Apartments (PVA).

She’s joined by Amy Macechko, director of the Oxford Coalition for a Healthy Community, and another volunteer. Together, they unload supplies — food and drinks, an easel, and plenty of paper and pens — and head back to a pavilion with picnic tables behind one of the apartment buildings.

As the volunteers get set up, Amy heads out to knock on doors and round up some of the kids living in the apartments. It’s become a Wednesday tradition in the complex. Every week over the summer, Lane Library and the Coalition team up to host a one-hour activity in collaboration with the PVA resident council.

“Our job is to walk alongside the residents and help support with resources and/or funding opportunities to build a healthier community within it,” Macechko said.

Today, Katy Abbott, a certified zen tangle teacher, teaches a group of a half-dozen kids how to use just a few squiggles on a line of paper as a calming exercise. Next week, it’ll be something new.

For one of Oxford’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, it’s a little bright spot in the week.

How a resident council is trying to bring PVA together

Since moving into PVA with her three children two years ago, Kody Garrison has been an active member of the community’s resident council.

“I’d just seen that they did stuff for the kids,” Garrison said. “They were involved a lot with the kids, so that’s what got me involved.”

The resident council consists of both PVA residents and community leaders in Oxford like Macechko. Kate Rousmaniere, a retired Miami professor and former mayor of Oxford, said the idea to form a resident council came about in 2016 or 2017, but she and Macechko agreed it had to involve the community directly.

PVA is privately owned, not public housing. Rousmaniere said that can present some unique challenges for the city as it looks for solutions to improve conditions for residents who receive vouchers to pay their rent. One initiative the council hopes to work on in the future involves installing a new playground, which will require partnership with the management company.

At one point, Rousmaniere said there were three or four very active residents in the council, and they would meet monthly. Because the community has a lot of mobility, though, it was difficult to stay consistent. Now, Garrison says she’s one of two regular attendees who actually lives in PVA.

Rousmaniere said the council’s past initiatives have included Thanksgiving dinners, Easter egg hunts and surveys distributed to the community to get a sense of what needs they could help meet.

“One of the questions we ask is pride. Do you have pride in your community?” Rousmaniere said. “... Over the years, that pride element has gotten a little bigger because of things like the residents council.”

This summer, Garrison led an effort to provide backpacks for students living at PVA. While the wider Oxford community can get free back-to-school supplies, clothing and haircuts at the Back to School Bash Aug. 11, the event doesn’t include backpacks, a critical need for some students. With the help of the resident council, Garrison got 15 backpacks to provide to kids in need.

Other initiatives Garrison has helped with include an ice cream social with the Oxford Police Department, which she said is set for August. The property manager, Lisa Alstott, sometimes attends the council meetings, Garrison said, but other times they have her leave in case residents feel more comfortable without management present.

A difficult summer for the community

Even though she’s involved on the resident council, Garrison said it isn’t easy to stay optimistic as a tenant at PVA. In late July, Garrison’s car was vandalized, and she won’t park it at PVA overnight anymore. Also this summer, she said her apartment had been broken into, but nothing was stolen.

While Garrison is still on the resident council, she said it’s a struggle to feel like she’s making a difference in the community.

“I feel very unsafe here now,” Garrison said. “As much as I do for the residents council for the kids and stuff, I don’t think that I should have to feel that way.”

After a fire made one unit uninhabitable in May, some residents spoke out about the conditions in their own units at two Oxford City Council meetings. Their concerns included persistent cockroach infestations, faulty appliances they said weren’t getting repaired properly and drug use that wasn’t being addressed adequately in the community.

When the property manager then distributed roughly 30 eviction notices, some felt the measure was retaliatory. Linda Fox, a property manager with LJF Management, said at the time that eviction notices are standard practice when residents don’t pay their rent on time, and they’re given an opportunity to fix it.

From the notices sent out in June, three proceeded to formal evictions on July 22, according to court records. Neighbors of two of the residents facing eviction confirmed that they had already moved out, though they’re still ordered to appear in court on Aug. 7.

Garrison said she hasn’t encountered any pest problems. For residents that do have ideas on how to improve the community, she said they should attend resident council meetings. While she doesn’t agree that the complex’s management is responsible for many of the problems in specific units, Garrison said there are areas for the property managers to improve.

At the June city council meetings, Vice Mayor Chantel Raghu said the high volume of calls for emergency services from PVA has put a drain on public services like the police department and EMS services. Change within the community could help reduce that problem in the long run, she said.

PVA has seen less calls for service so far in 2024 compared to the same point in 2023, though calls in June and July were higher than the same months last year. Overall, 3.7% of calls for service from Jan. 2023 through July 2024 were to Parkview Arms.

One PVA resident who preferred not to be named said she thought the problems facing residents in the community might be better addressed by increased access to social services and other interventions than an overhaul of management.

“There needs to be more police presence to monitor the drug activity, and that’s kind of where I’m at,” the resident said. “But a lot of people don’t have the education, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the knowledge to reach out and get that sort of help.”

Working toward positive change

Despite the challenges facing PVA, Macechko and others say there are bright spots in the community. The resident who spoke anonymously said in her experience, her neighbors were quick to support each other whenever someone’s in need, whether that means sharing trash bags or carpooling to the grocery store.

Over the years, Macechko said the resident council has encouraged some positive changes as well. With the help of grant funding in the fall of 2022, she said they were able to install external lights on several of the buildings after they heard from several residents who felt unsafe in the dark at night.

“It’s just really important that this is the work and the desire and the will of the residents,” Macechko said. “It is just our privilege to walk alongside and support in any way the Coalition can.”

Later this month, Macechko said they’re also helping to install a kiosk to post announcements for the community. Talawanda School District used to host a breakfast club before school for PVA students who go to Kramer Elementary to show up early, eat a hot meal and take part in an activity. After the school district opted to change the start times for elementary students, that program pivoted to become an after-school activity once a week in Lane Library, which the Coalition for a Healthy Community helps provide transportation to.

This fall, Macechko said the residents council will start giving welcome baskets to new tenants as they move in, which she hopes will also make them feel more open to getting involved.

As for Garrison, she said she hopes the wider community’s impressions of PVA residents will change over time. While some past interactions have led people to stereotype every PVA resident as the same, Garrison said, those stereotypes don’t reflect the community.

“A lot of people don’t know about the struggles unless they’ve been here or they’ve lived here in PVA,” Garrison said. “A lot of the college kids don’t know anything about this; they think of it as a bad place all the time … It just breaks my heart.”