Apartment Choice

On Aug. 9, 2007, Lansing police discovered the beaten body of 46-year-old Debra Renfors in her apartment in the 1000 block of North Washington Street . Renfors was the third woman to be bludgeoned to death in the city in two weeks, and a grim reality was beginning to set in. Det. Sgt. Joey Dionise confronted Captain Ray Hall , giving voice to a fear that had been bubbling for days. “Captain,” Dionise said, ”We have a serial killer. Years later, Hall still remembers the “sinking feeling” that accompanied that moment. Ten years ago this month, Lansing was in the grip of a killer who preyed on single women, using whatever was convenient to murder them, and, in some instances, sexually assaulting them. Before police caught him, he had killed five women in just over four weeks. A sixth woman would survive. Matthew Emmanuel Macon , then 27, was eventually convicted of two of the murders, and the assault of the surviving victim. When detectives got Macon in an interview room, it would take ...

CHAPEL HILL A property management company has cut the rent at two apartment complexes to give public employees an affordable way to live in town. Chapel Hill - based Eller Capital Partners is reducing the rent for newly renovated apartments at Midtown 501 – formerly Foxcroft Apartments near Erwin Road and U.S. 15-501 – and 86 North – formerly Timberlyne Apartments near Weaver Dairy Road . The offer, which also waives application and administration fees, is available to thousands of employees who now commute from surrounding counties to work for the town of Chapel Hill , the town of Carrboro, UNC and UNC Health Care , and other state agencies. It could save them a few thousand dollars a year, said Daniel Eller, president and chief executive officer of Eller Residential, a division of Eller Capital Partners . The rent would be $645 a month for a one- bedroom apartment at 86 North – reduced from $795 – and $895 a month for two bedrooms – reduced from $1,095. That would be affordab...

Leesha Posey remembers cutting across a vacant lot in North Portland on her way to Harriet Tubman Middle School . "It's been empty since I was a little girl," says Posey, 41. That was three decades ago. But the lot still sits empty—a rarity in a city where vacant land is coveted, especially in the red- hot North Williams Avenue corridor . Its emptiness is a reminder of what the city and its urban renewal agency , Prosper Portland , took from the black community . In the 1960s, the city-owned agency, then known as the Portland Development Commission , condemned vast tracts of inner North and Northeast Portland . The takings—including the still-vacant block at the northwest corner of North Williams Avenue and Russell Street—allowed urban renewal, including construction of parts of Interstate 5, the Oregon Convention Center and Legacy Emanuel Hospital . But in the process, the agency gutted neighborhoods and dispersed the black community . In a belated ef...