Sandra Springs can’t escape offers from corporations to buy her home.
In 1989, when she and her husband bought their five-bedroom house in Hidden Valley — a predominantly Black community in northeast Charlotte — it cost them $65,000. After moving there, the couple developed lasting friendships with neighbors and grew to love the community where they raised their family.
Today Springs watches homes nearby her house sell for upwards of $400,000. While it’s not always clear who is buying them, offers at her own doorstep have yet to slow down. .
“I get post cards, letters, and I of course tell them no,” Springs, 68, said. “Then they ask me, do I have any other land or ask if I know anybody else selling their house?”
The attention to Spring’s house isn’t uncommon. Corporations, large and small, own homes at a higher rate in Hidden Valley than across Mecklenburg County today.
As investors have turned their eyes to the neighborhood, residents fear that, like other historically Black communities in Charlotte, Hidden Valley may no longer be within reach, like it had been for so many families decades before. Black homeownership is Hidden Valley’s legacy. Now corporate landlords threaten that.
