Roosevelt Village: A Village of Hope

BY ADRIANNA LASKOWSKI and KYLE FERLITA

Columbia,S.C.: Roosevelt Village, a 49-year-old apartment complex, houses some of the city’s poorest citizens. After years of neglect, a local parish is stepping in to give the aging buildings a new hope. For more information click here.

Roosevelt Village SC. The two-bedroom, concrete-floored apartment smells of years of neglect. Roaches crawl around the kitchen and scamper from an opened refrigerator.
The man, who lives there, 71-year old World War II veteran Willie Freeman, spends his days in a wheelchair playing cards.
For years, Roosevelt Village tenants were afraid to go outside at night. Drug deals, prostitution and drive-by shootings riddled the neighborhood.
But things are changing. After years of being ignored the tenants are getting help.
The change is as visible as the children who romp in the yard where drug dealers once pushed cocaine.
The Richland County Sheriff's Department opened a substation within the apartment complex to increase law enforcement presence in the area.
A church paid $50,000 to build a community center in the complex, that will open in April.
The residents no longer have to sleep on the floor or be afraid of stray bullets.
For now residents no longer look out their window and see drug dealers or wake up to criminals being chased by deputies.