The Housing Authority

Brown knew better. Holden had lived at Chouteau in the past; in fact, he and his mother had a unit in the building right next to Brown's. He seemed like a nice guy. But he ran with the wrong crowd.

Brown wasn't surprised by the homicide — she was fed up. She'd heard plenty of talk at meetings about increasing police presence at Chouteau, but she hadn't seen more cops at the complex.

Without an appointment, she made a trip to the Central Patrol Division, where Major Gary Majors agreed to meet with her. Majors told Brown that he was eager to get more involvement from tenants like her. Police had recently shut down a similar crime epidemic at nearby Charlie Parker Square, so he knew that the KCPD could get Chouteau under control — if everyone sat down together to come up with a plan.

At the next Housing Authority commissioners' meeting, Brown sat in the back, as she always does. Usually, when the commissioners finish going through the agenda, there's an unspoken assumption that the meeting isn't over until Miss Lizzie has said her piece. This time, it came in the form of a challenge: She asked the commissioners to sleep over at Chouteau for an entire weekend.

It was Friday, October 13, when half a dozen commissioners and administrators set up military cots in one of the vacant units. Just past 6 p.m. — prime time for criminal activity — they started wandering around the complex. They chatted with tenants sitting on their front stairs; they even approached the probable troublemakers who were lingering around the perimeters.

The next morning, more than 40 tenants packed the community center for a town-hall-style meeting. (Usually, hardly anyone shows up to tenant events.) The crowd ate pancakes. A handful of kids led the officials around by the hand and drew a plan for a new playground.

It wasn't all hand-holding, though. At times, the roundtable discussion descended into angry accusations as neighbors who generally kept resentments to themselves aired their grievances with one another.

The event generated new interest in weekly meetings with police. When a wall of squad cars lined the street outside Chouteau's office every Monday afternoon, more than 15 tenants would show up, willing to be seen talking to the cops. They'd give Majors and his officers tips on drug dealers and prostitutes.

Majors says he made Chouteau his pet project. And in the months that followed Holden's slaying, crime dropped dramatically. He singles out Brown as the spark for getting everyone together.

"I will give credit where credit is due," he says. "She's the catalyst that got all this stuff going."

These days, though, Brown doesn't talk to the cops. On February 7, somebody set fire to her apartment's front door.

She didn't notice when it happened. But when a caretaker from Bethlehem Home showed up around 8 a.m., she asked Brown an unusual question. "She said, 'Miss Lizzie, who's trying to set your place on fire?'"

Brown looked outside and saw a pile of ashes. Black soot licked the bottom of the steel door. She called the police and had the manager take a picture. According to the police report, ashes were scattered throughout the corridor. Majors says the small fire didn't appear to be a threat on Brown's life. Brown disagrees.

She keeps the ashes in a white plastic bag next to the door. It reminds her to think twice before calling the police, to be wary of taking a public stand against crime at Chouteau.

"These are entrepreneur people," she says of drug dealers. "Evidently, something I was doing was messing with their money. I get the message. I understand. I'm not going to bother with nothing else, nothing dealing with the police."

Spring was peaceful at Chouteau, but now that it's summer, crime is coming back. In May, Majors listened as tenants said drug dealing was getting out of control again. Manager Shari Taylor said dealers flouted her authority, doing business in broad daylight.

Brown doesn't go to those meetings anymore. She is hoping to keep her position as Tenant Association president when elections come up next month — the post pays an $80 monthly stipend, but that's not why Brown stays up until two or three in the morning talking to Florine Jones, her old friend, about housing issues.

Whatever happens with the crime problem, there's other stuff to work on. Such as moving people out of Chouteau altogether.

Lowndes acknowledges that the old landfill is settling under Chouteau and that the aging site is coming to the end of its life expectancy. But the Housing Authority of Kansas City has no real plans for Chouteau's future.

"We're living on a place that used to be a dump, and I don't see anybody working to get us out of here," Brown says.

After such a long, hard fight for people in public housing, she says she doesn't want to be buried alive.