Pioneer Homes, just under the I-81 Viaduct, is New York’s oldest public housing project. The people who live there are used to staying alert to rumors. The rumors have gone so far that most of the residents thought they were losing their homes.
When the city provides the very roof over your head, you hope for the best but prepare for the worst. You listen to any rumor you hear.
“So anytime they talk about coming in here, doing something to our home. We get worried about it,” Gregory Myers said. “We don’t know.”
Gregory Myers has never lived in a home of his own. He’s been in public housing his entire life. For the past two and a half decades, he’s been a resident in Syracuse’s Pioneer Homes. He can’t imagine living anywhere else.
“This corner here. We used to sing doo-wap. About how much we love our baby,” Myers remembers. “Miss Jones, Miss Robinson, and Miss Smith would look out the window and say ‘Okay boys! Time to go home!’ Would we? Sometimes.”
He’s known as “Uncle Butch” in Pioneer Homes. Myers is the self-proclaimed mayor of the neighborhood. He’s always checked in to what the latest rumor is. This time, rumor has it, the city is going to tear this place down! At least that was the rumor that neighbors heard.
“You get comfortable, you don’t like change. Change hurts,” Myers said. “Not knowing, especially people who have been ram shammed their entire life.”
The rumors started when news stories popped up talking about how SUNY Upstate, the hospital across the way from I-81 was going to build an Optometry school where Pioneer Homes now stands. The articles also talked about how the city was going to sell this property. The rumor mill missed the nuances buried in the news stories.
The most important part: it was all just an idea. Not a plan.
“The way the facts rolled out, it really gave the impression that there was some kind of a deal cut, contract signed, and these houses were going to be replaced, and there was no accountability for the existing residents,” Syracuse Housing Authority’s Bill Simmons said. “Which is probably the furthest thing from the truth.”
Simmons visits Pioneer Homes nearly every week. No matter how many times he tells people here they’re not being tossed to the curb, the rumors spread faster than his reassurances.
“I don’t get a dime from the federal government unless they – the federal government – approve of my plan on what happens to these residents,” Simmons said.
Pioneer Homes is federally funded public housing, which means the city can’t evict the residents and leave them homeless.
“These tenants are well-protected with their rights to return to this property,” Simmons said.
The city is legally obligated to provide them with a place to stay. The rumor mill always leaves out that fact.
Like many rumors, this one has a grain of truth. Eventually, Syracuse says it will demolish Pioneer Homes as part of an 800 million-dollar revitalization plan. But Simmons says the demolition and construction will take about a decade to complete.
“Of the 675 families, we anticipate most of them will only move once, from one building to the next, Simmons said. “So that’s why we have to do it in phasing, and that’s why it takes a lot longer.”
After NCC News spoke to the Syracuse Authority, we went back to tell Uncle Butch the news. The rumor mill was wrong. His home was safe. But he already heard from his neighbors. Only this time, it was not a rumor.
“They [Syracuse Housing Authority] just said no, they killed the idea. That it ain’t going to happen.”
When you don’t own your place and you can’t control your destiny, you live your life trusting what you hear, even if it’s just a rumor.
That revitalization plan has eleven phases. The first phase is starting this summer at McKinney Manor which is just a little over a mile away from Pioneer Homes.
