The Battle For Windy Ridge

[n2doc]

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer – Sat Mar 26, 10:24 am ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – There's only one way in to Windy Ridge — across freight train tracks that zipper up the subdivision on three sides. Living room windows offer views of a cardboard box factory and a Pepsi bottling plant. It's an unlikely place to come looking for the American Dream.

But to appreciate Wigena Tirado's bond with this neighborhood of 133 vinyl-sided starter homes planted on a mostly treeless slope, listen to how she got there.

Tirado, a divorced mother of four with a degree in social work, moved to North Carolina in 2003 searching for a job and counting on a Section 8 low-income housing voucher to cover most of her rent. She moved out of her first home after eight months when she woke to find a bullet hole in the front door. Then, Tirado rented a house with a porch in a neighborhood that felt a little like being out in the country. But she fled that place, too, after it was burglarized at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon.

By then, Tirado was teaching at a daycare center. She jumped at one mother's suggestion that she rent the house across from her own.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110326/ap_on_re_us/us_the_battle_for_windy_ridge

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Good Read