About half of the 60 or so Somali-Bantu refugees living at tension-plagued Maple Grove Apartments in Northwest Roanoke have been accepted as rent-subsidized tenants of a complex owned by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Although there's a waiting list at the authority's Lansdowne Park apartments about two miles from the Maple Grove complex, the refugees are being given preference because condemnations of five units at that facility by city code enforcement inspectors forced the Somali-Bantus to relocate, said Glenda Edwards, executive director of the agency.

"This will be a better environment as far as apartments, certainly -- healthier," said Beth Lutjen, director of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond's Refugee and Immigration Services office in Roanoke. Her organization has been placing families from Africa and elsewhere in Roanoke-area apartments for years, with low rents being a key factor in settling them.

Since mid-March, Maple Grove Apartments has been the scene of divisive relations between the Somali-Bantus and American-born blacks who are also residents there. The dissension has erupted into rock-throwing that has broken windows, with each side blaming the other.

Blighted conditions at the apartments have contributed to dissatisfaction that boils over into anger, residents say. Among the code violations cited by inspectors since March are mold-ridden drywall, exposed electrical wiring and roach infestation.

The apartments are owned by Maple Grove Apartments Inc., a Virginia corporation of which Dr. George Abraham, a Roanoke allergist, is the only officer. Abraham has met with The Roanoke Times but declined to respond to questions about the apartments.

The Africans were assisted in applying for their move to public housing by Amy Nasta, the coordinator of Virginia Tech's Pilot Street Program, a nonprofit refugee education program that rents a unit at Maple Grove as a classroom. But Nasta has said she's relocating the classes when her lease runs out at the end of May because of the violence and increasingly blighted condition of the complex. "It's so wonderful that they're going to be safer," she said.

Lutjen said she's unsure if the remaining Somali-Bantus at Maple Grove Apartments will stay. It's uncertain they'll have a choice because code inspectors are only about halfway through a check of all 40 units for violations, leaving the possibility that more could be condemned -- which would mean those units must be vacated.