Mecklenburg County Articles & Publications

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Meeting the Needs of the West Sugar Creek Corridor
   March 28, 2024
Mae Israel

Fifty years ago, Odell Witherspoon moved into northeast Charlotte’s Hidden Valley neighborhood, attracted by the nice houses and large backyards. “It was,” he said, “a destination neighborhood, an ideal neighborhood.” But that legacy is eroding, and Witherspoon is trying to protect it.

Seven years ago, after leaving the Dominican Republic and living in France for a while,...

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Moving to Charlotte? Here’s the Best Moving Tool
   March 28, 2024
Katie Zager

Moving can be stressful, especially when you’re heading to a new city.

Finding a place to live, when you don’t know the lay of the land, where to find preferred amenities, or may not know anyone in your new home town, is doubly so. With hundreds of homes for sale, and thousands of apartment listings, where do you even start? Once you’ve settled on your price point, and found a few...

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The haunted history of reclaiming a floodplain
   August 24, 2023
Ruth Ann Grissom

Chantilly Ecological Sanctuary, informally known as Chantilly Eco-Park, is an oasis in East Charlotte, a part of the county underserved by green space.  Hugging a section of Briar Creek, its roughly 24 acres support lush wetlands,...

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Alternatives to Violence Program offers promise, lessons for preventing gun violence

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Three takeaways from new report on homelessness and incarceration in Charlotte-Mecklenburg
   May 4, 2023
Bridget Anderson

Today, May 4th, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services released the Homelessness Among the Incarcerated Population...

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A Trip to the W.T. Alexander Plantation Cemetery for Enslaved Persons
   May 3, 2023

Maris Bey, MSW Intern

As a part of my internship with the Urban Institute, I completed a project on the history of race, racism, and resistance at UNC Charlotte. A significant component of this work focused on the land of UNC Charlotte’s campuses. Through this research, I...

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Segregation by Design
   May 3, 2023
Aaron Houck, Ph.D.

Charlotte’s neighborhoods (like those of many American cities) are highly segregated by race and economic status. 

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Trees for Pollinators
   March 6, 2023
Ruth Ann Grissom

What sort of image comes to mind when you think of a “pollinator garden?”  I see an island of native grasses and perennials surrounded by a sea of turf.  That’s the garden I helped to install in my neighborhood park in Charlotte.  We...

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Connecting for Stability: Understanding The Relatives and the Young People They Serve
   February 22, 2023
Jenny Hutchison, Ph.D.Sydney Idzikowski
Trish Hobson, Executive Director - The Relatives

As a community, we often talk about the young people who are the “most vulnerable” or who are at “high risk.” Admittedly, we don’t always know who exactly those young people are and what their experiences have been. And far too often, those labels become the only story we associate with them. We don’t always know how to...

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Building a rideshare company from scratch
   February 17, 2023

Lindsey Banks, Charlotte Ledger

Kimberly Evans grew up with the warning “stranger danger,” so when rideshare services like Uber and Lyft came into the picture, Evans was hesitant to use them.  

Then, on March 29, 2019, Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old student at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, ordered an Uber and mistakenly entered the wrong car. She was ...

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