On October 9, 2023, at the First Presbyterian’s Davis Hall, WeBuild will host our Inaugural Build a Better Cabarrus Breakfast and Annual Meeting. The meeting provides a glance at the state of housing in Cabarrus, the accomplishments of our residents and partners, and future developments. Board member Dakeita Vanderburg is the lead organizer of the breakfast. WeBuild will announce and explain its Revolving Construction Fund concept. The RC Fund will allow partners and Webuild to use zero to low-interest loans to construct affordable and workforce housing projects promoting ownership. We...

Two of WeBuild Concord’s core values are opportunity and respect. Opportunity means partnering to ensure residents have quality homes that improve their ability to thrive and build wealth. Respect promotes pride and dignity in our community through high standards and thoughtful stewardship. Both of these qualities are part of our building process. The thought that working individuals needing affordable options must give up quality is foreign to us. Recently, a person earning above our income threshold requested from a realty partner, “I want a WeBuild home,” she said. “I like the look and quality...

Between August and December, WeBuild Concord will have nine newly built homes on the market for low to moderate-income households. This is in addition to constructing two multi-family projects providing forty new dwellings for ownership and rent. However, we have focused further on naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) opportunities. NOAHs are homes or existing structures that provide a way to maintain affordable housing through upgrades and repurposing properties. We place these properties into our community land trust to ensure permanent affordability. Over the past few months, WeBuild...

As a social and public sector workforce, housing, and policy leader for over 20 years, I am still surprised by questions reinforcing a false sense of meritocracy. On a few occasions, I have been asked, “How do your customers earn their housing with WeBuild?”  “Do these people do any work for their home?” These questions are rooted in the notion that some people deserve opportunity and others do not, regardless of circumstance or factual nuances. WeBuild residents have nothing to prove. They earned their long overdue opportunities before we existed. Our recent residents in homes for ownership...