A dog walks through the recently repaved streets of Eastmoor Subdivision, located directly next to a catfish feed manufacturing facility near Moorhead, Mississippi on Oct. 8, 2020.
Eastmoor - Painfully Overlooked in the Mississippi Delta
By Rory Doyle (Moorhead, MS)
The Eastmoor Subdivision, just outside of Moorhead, Mississippi in rural Sunflower County, is a prime example of the suffering caused by lack of oversight in affordable housing developments. In one of the most economically-challenged regions in America, a community of African American residents has faced distress for decades after a series of missteps and injustices related to the development and management of the homes in their neighborhood.
The 84-home Eastmoor development was approved by local elected officials in 1969, just half a mile east of Moorhead city limits. The city and county agreed, atypically, to share infrastructure ownership and management because of the proximity to city limits.
An aerial view of the Eastmoor Subdivision shows its proximity to a catfish feed manufacturing facility outside the city limits of Moorhead, Mississippi on Sept. 2, 2020.
The location also meant residents, including Black residents who had recently gained the right to vote through the Voting Right Act of 1965, wouldn’t be eligible to vote in municipal elections. This detail alone is representative of the racial inequity and voter disenfranchisement issues that have plagued Mississippi for generations.
Emma Bush, 77, moved to Eastmoor with her husband Jerlean, now deceased, in 1971 with high hopes for raising their 10 children in a new home, leaving behind inadequate sharecropper housing.
“It was really exciting at first,” said Bush. “We’d been staying about nine miles away in the country with no water, no bathroom, no one else around. And I would always say, Lord, I hope we can get into one of those houses, and we did. We were just so rejoiced and happy.”
Homeowner Emma Bush (left) hangs out on her front porch with her granddaughter Alexis Bush-Woods and her great-granddaughter Malaysia Woods in Eastmoor on Sept. 2, 2020.
But evidence of inadequate building practices and deferred maintenance (at both the scale of the individual homes and the neighborhood’s storm sewer, sanitary sewer and road) accumulated and became prominent around 2000. Many homes were suffering from failing foundations, electrical issues, rotting shingles, pest infestations, and horrific failures in the sewer systems. According to Bush, it got so bad that no one would walk near her home for three years. Raw sewage seeped into their house through the toilet and bathtub, and after heavy rains, sewage would flood her front yard into a swampy mess.
Johnny Carter, 67, moved into a mobile home in the subdivision in 1990.
“Sometimes you’d look around and have to ask — is this America, or is this a third world country?”
Emontrel Briscoe (left) plays in the front yard of his grandmother’s house, while Twanna McCoy escorts her father, Sylvester McCoy, outside their home in the Eastmoor on Oct. 8, 2020.
After decades of decay and neglect, Eastmoor finally took a turn for the better. In 2001 Congressman Bennie Thompson visited the neighborhood and was so alarmed by the deteriorating conditions that he alerted the federal government, which discontinued the developer’s tax credits and Section 8 subsidies. Though this stemmed the tide of graft, the residents were left with the decision to relocate or continue to occupy homes that were neglected by the owner in a neighborhood neglected by the local governments.
In response, community members formed the Eastmoor Residents Association with the goal of staying in their homes and working together to realize better living conditions. This resilience eventually paid off when they were connected with the University of Mississippi’s Housing Law Clinic. After years of negotiations, the lawyers at the Law Clinic filed suit on behalf of the Eastmoor Residents Association against the developer, the city and the county in 2010. The suit was settled out of court and as a result the county repaired the road and the storm sewer, the city repaired the sanitary sewer, and the developer had to deed the properties to the occupants who had entered into unfair lease-purchase agreements with him.
LaQuitta Williams (left) and Rafeal Johnson (right) seal windows in a remodeled home in the Eastmoor Subdivision directly next to a catfish feed manufacturing facility outside the city limits of Moorhead, Mississippi on Sept. 2, 2020.
Following the successful lawsuit, Eastmoor residents were finally homeowners, but the years of deferred maintenance had taken their toll, and the living conditions in many of the homes were unsafe and unhealthy. The Delta Design Build Workshop (Delta DB), a social impact design build firm, was invited to Eastmoor Residents Association meeting in 2016 to talk about what could be done for the homes. Delta DB co-founder Emily Roush-Elliott recalls leaving the meeting feeling like the resources needed for the neighborhood scale effort would be impossible to find, but around the same time HOPE Enterprise Corporation was also introduced to Eastmoor. Inspired by the story and seeking to support housing efforts in the Mississippi Delta, HOPE connected with various funders and secured funding to rehabilitate or replace 40 of the homes. Today, 27 homes have been rehabilitated and 13 new homes have been built or are under construction.
Members of the Delta Design Build Workshop crew frame a house in the Eastmoor Subdivision near Moorhead, Mississippi on Sept. 2, 2020.
“I think of it as fighting for the baseline,” said Roush-Elliott. “Functional infrastructure, protection from predatory development practices, and living without fear of the floor beneath you shifting are expectations that all Americans have, but there are many examples like Eastmoor of people living in poverty, often people of color, struggling for years in pursuit of even this level of ‘normal.’”
Emily Roush-Elliott (right), co-founder of Delta Design Build Workshop, saws trim board with the help of Ashante Odogun-Williams, outside a remodeled home in the Eastmoor on Sept. 2, 2020.
Richard Elliott, Delta DB co-founder, led construction in Eastmoor over the past three years.
“Our biggest goal has been to reduce the stress level for the people living in Eastmoor,” Elliott said. “You’re always going to have stresses when it comes to housing, but our goal was to eliminate the unnecessary stresses here. For the most part, I think we’ve changed that in Eastmoor.”
Carter, who now lives in a replacement home in Eastmoor, said this approach has drastically changed the quality of life for him and his neighbors.
“The people at Hope and Delta Design Build Workshop have made us feel comfortable in our homes, and I’m so thankful for that,” he said. “The people who’ve worked on Eastmoor have blessed me. They’ve blessed us.”
Johnny Carter, a recipient of a new home in the Eastmoor Subdivision, poses for a portrait in his house on Oct. 8, 2020.
Bush echoed praise for how much the subdivision has been revitalized.
“It just uplifts me to know that other people care about us,” she said. “Our prayers have been answered. I can’t thank everyone enough for helping us. I’m so happy to see Eastmoor building back up. We were down for a while, but we’ve come back. I asked God for a makeover, to pick us back up, and that’s what we got. I’ll be thanking God until the day he takes me out of this world.”
Jeremiah Whitehead (left) and Derek Brown Jr. (right) work on a home build site at Eastmoor on Oct. 8, 2020.
BJ Kinds (center), construction manager with Delta Design Build Workshop, frames a house in Eastmoor on Sept. 2, 2020.
Another element of Delta DB’s mission is to hire staff members who have direct ties to the region, creating an opportunity to use their own hands to rebuild and revamp their communities. Greenwood, Mississippi native Dontavius Mclemore, 22 has been working with the organization for over three years.
“I love this kind of work, because I’m the type of person who wants to make other people happy,” said Mclemore. “I didn’t know about Eastmoor before I started working here, and I learned we could help make a difference. You can see that people were taken advantage of, and they weren’t cared for. This type of work shows that you can change something as a group. It’s a good feeling to know I can help people from my neighborhood.”
Dontavius Mclemore, construction specialist with Delta Design Build Workshop, poses for a portrait inside a home rebuild in Eastmoor on Nov. 5, 2020.
The highs and lows of Eastmoor’s story are reflective of America’s larger history with affordable housing developments. While residents remain thankful for the significant improvements, Elliott believes there is endless progress needed to rectify the systematic barriers that perpetuate these dilemmas.
“We’re at a really happy place in the story of Eastmoor right now, but racial inequity in the built environment is pervasive in the Mississippi Delta, and the successes in Eastmoor are the exception,” said Elliott. “There is so much more work to be done around safe, stable, affordable housing.”
Siblings Ekira and Emontrel Briscoe play outside their grandmother’s house while Delta Build Design Workshop crew members work on a home build site in Eastmoor on Oct. 8, 2020.
Rory Doyle
Cleveland, MS
(w) www.rorydoylephoto.com (ig) @rorydoylephoto
Rory Doyle is a working photographer based in Cleveland, Mississippi in the rural Mississippi Delta. Born and raised in Maine, Doyle studied journalism at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. In 2009, he moved to Mississippi to pursue a master’s degree at Delta State University. Doyle has remained committed to photographing Mississippi and the South, with a particular focus on sharing positive stories in the Delta. He was a 2018 Visual Artist Fellow through the Mississippi Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts. He won the 16th Annual Smithsonian Photo Contest in 2019, the 2019 Southern Prize from the South Arts organization, the 2019 Zeiss Photography Award, and the 2019 ZEKE Award for Documentary Photography. Doyle has exhibited in New York, London, Atlanta, Mississippi and beyond. His work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, ESPN, The Guardian, CNN and numerous outlets.
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"Spending time in Eastmoor, I felt this neighborhood’s story relates to the larger history of injustices that inflicted affordable housing developments. I agree with the residents of Eastmoor, and the Delta Design Build Workshop crew, that significant progress is needed to help put an end to these systematic impediments."