Home for the Holidays

An unabashed celebration

Inside Frank Byers’ Enderly Park house is a typical scene from a week of moving: still-packed boxes, haphazard furniture placement, stacks to donate, to trash, and to store. Moving is always a pain, but Frank absolutely does not care this time. After forty years of wanting to own a home, it finally happened on Friday, December 16. Frank started packing the truck immediately and worked through the long December night to get the essentials put together. 

He had been waiting for years to know this moment: “When I woke up on Saturday, I said, ‘Damn, I’m in my own house.’ I woke up and I felt like a hero.”

Heroism is not too much of a stretch. Frank, who is 68 years old, remembers some early Habitat for Humanity builds in Charlotte in the 1980s. He wanted to own a house then, but a lot has gotten in the way over forty years. The structural was always stacked against him. Ongoing redlining kept loans out of the neighborhoods Frank could afford. Public subsidies mostly flowed to large mortgage holders in the suburbs, not to poor ones in cities. The policies pressed down. Humans can hold up but so much.

Stretches of homelessness followed. So did battles with addiction. Frank persisted. He still persists, and now celebrates 26 years clean. He’s been a mentor to dozens in recovery. You’ll find evidence of Frank’s kindness and persistence all over Charlotte. None of it is big or splashy. All of it is the result of Frank’s basic ethic: “I kept going. I kept trying. I didn’t give up,” he says.

left, Frank Byers at closing of his house purchase with (left to right) a West Side CLT staff member, West Side CLT Director Charis Blackmon, QC Family Tree Co-Director Shamaiye Haynes, and realtor Angela Ambroise; center and right, Frank Byers on the front porch of his house.

In 2016, Frank was one of a handful of concerned residents in west Charlotte who wanted to create further housing options. Gentrification had already arrived in some places on the west side. In other places, the signs were clear, even if the visible changes were not. In the living room of one of the houses at QC Family Tree, ten neighbors gathered to begin working on a new organization. West Side Community Land Trust, as it would be called, would use the community land trust model to develop permanently affordable housing for residents facing displacement. (Disclosure: I was one of the residents. The living room was mine.) For several years, we met weekly to build a grassroots movement and to work on finding the funding we needed to develop a sophisticated housing organization.

Those were long, tedious years. There were as many setbacks as there were steps forward. A few funders saw promise. Most thought we were nuts. We followed Frank’s example–we kept going. We kept trying. We didn’t give up.

And then on December 14, 2019, we paraded down Tuckaseegee Road, the main thoroughfare of Enderly Park, following a house.

House movers taking the first West Side Community Land Trust home from its original location to its new place on Tuckaseegee Road. Dec. 14, 2019. Photo by Greg Jarrell.

Hillary and Hogan Fulgham donated it. Someone else provided the lot for it. The local chapter of the American Institute of Architects drew plans to renovate and re-orient the house to its new home. And Frank thought, quietly, “one of these houses we are moving is going to be mine one day.” 

Nearly four years later, to the day, it happened.

Frank Byers unlocks the door to his home for the first time. Photo by Shamaiye Haynes.

Frank woke up in his own bed in his own house, feeling like a hero. His son Frank, Jr., a recent high school graduate, felt as content as he has felt in years. Their Christmas celebration was going to be simple. Moving a few more boxes. Perhaps a new couch. Something good to eat. 

And then, another sleep in their own beds. In their own house.    

An end of year ask: I’ve avoided commingling this Substack and QC Family Tree (the nonprofit I work for), but I’m going to do so briefly. QC Family Tree does affordable housing and cultural organizing work in Charlotte. We helped start the land trust mentioned above, but we also maintain some long-term affordable rental housing. We hope that stories like Frank’s, with people moving from that affordable rental housing into equity-building, ownership arrangements like the land trust, will become commonplace in our work. If you’re inclined to support that in your year-end giving, this link will help. 

Updates on Our Trespasses: Release is February 20. Mark your calendars for an event in Charlotte that evening. Details forthcoming. I’m also working on a paid-subscribers-only event, date and location to be kept top secret. Join the secret society by upgrading your membership.

Not in Charlotte? I’d love to bring a talk/event to you. Contact me and let’s talk about how to make it happen.

Next time: The question I get most frequently goes like this: “You write about hard stuff all the time. Where do you see hope?” I’m going to answer that next week. Subscribe to make sure you get it delivered directly to your inbox.