By Lexi Wilson, WCNC-TV
Some of Charlotte’s homeless now have a safe place to call home.
Home Again Foundation, a local nonprofit that’s seeking solutions to the city’s homeless problem, recently built affordable housing units on a piece of land that would have been used for a single-family home.
The units are on Cochrane Drive in the Nevin area. There are currently seven adults and two children living in the units.
Everyone’s definition of home is different. Chantress Brewton’s definition is a place she can call her own.
“It’s mine and I don’t have to worry about anybody else being here unless I want them here,” Brewton said. “I’m still settling into the fact that it’s real.”
About a month ago, Brewton was staying anywhere she could. Now she lives in one of eight newly built affordable housing units, but it wasn’t easy getting here.
“A lot of people, they end up in my situation because they started drugs, they were drinking, some people didn’t finish school, for me that wasn’t it,” Brewton said. “I was in school I was working I was good, my health is what stopped me.”
Brewton has something called Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome also known as POTS, it affects blood flow causing her to faint.
“Because of that, I couldn’t work the way I could before and because I couldn’t work the way I could before… I didn’t have the money that I had before,” Brewton said.
Money, and a lot of it, is what you need to rent a place in Charlotte.
According to a recent rent report done by Apartment Guide, the average rent in Charlotte for a one-bedroom is $1,324.
At the Home Again Foundation units, rent ranges from $480 to $1,045 dollars a month, depending on the unit. It also includes utilities.
“This crisis needs to stop, it’s unnecessary suffering, people are coming in and buying everything and building, it looks beautiful. Charlotte it does, but what you’re building you can’t give to your citizens,” Chief Housing and Program Officer for Home Again Foundation Vickie Craighead-Davis said.
Home Again Foundation offers residents assistance like financial literacy and employment. It’s all in an effort to create self-sufficient residents so they will always have a place to call home.
“This is a nonprofit doing building not just a property management company because we don’t want to get rich, we want them to get rich, we want them to get better and succeed,” Vickie Craighead-Davis said.
“This is going to give me the foundation for me to be where I want to be because I don’t plan to live here forever,” Brewton said.
Home Again Foundation plans to buy more land to build more units, but funding is a barrier.
The Charlotte Journalism Collaborative is supported by the Local Media Project, an initiative launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with support from the Knight Foundation to strengthen and reinvigorate local media ecosystems.
