PWH Welcomes New Staff

November 29, 2021Uncategorized

Please join us in welcoming two new staff: Program Director, Erika Walker, and Graduate Intern, Maggie Simonds!

Erika Walker
Maggie Simonds

Erika joined Pee Wee Homes in September 2021 bringing over 11 years of project and program management experience across international development, higher education, racial justice, public health, reproductive justice, refugee resettlement and nonprofit management. She has an MPA from the UNC School of Government. Having called Carrboro and Chapel Hill home for 8 years, she is excited to return to the community where she was born and build deeper connections with her neighbors. Erika enjoys gardening, hiking, singing and running, but mostly having good food and good laughs with the people she loves. She and her partner have a goofy 1-year-old and a goofier adopted rottweiler mix.

Maggie is an MPH student at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in the Nutrition and Dietetics concentration. She joined us in November 2021 and will support Pee Wee Homes to create a meaningful community for residents, neighbors, and others in Chapel Hill. Maggie is originally from Massachusetts and graduated from Northeastern University with a BS in Health Science. She moved to North Carolina from Portland, Maine where she worked as a FoodCorps service member teaching elementary-age students cooking and food justice-based lessons while helping to build a school garden. Outside of class, Maggie is passionate about cooking, running, and skiing. In the future, she hopes to continue community-based work and use her degree to work in school food.

Hello world!

December 16, 2015Uncategorized

We are asking YOU to help us raise the final $30,000 needed toward our first community by 1/1/17 —Three homes, three lives, and the possibility of sparking a movement that would help alleviate the desperate need for affordable, sustainable housing in our area and throughout the US.

OUR INSPIRATION

Pee-Wee is 72 years old, has lived in Chapel Hill his whole life. —  He was a skilled brick mason for decades . Building dozens of the brick buildings we see to this day in our community. After suffering a stroke in 1995, he lost his ability to walk and speak temporarily and his acute motor control – leaving him unable to practice his trade. Without steady income, he could not afford a home in Orange County and was homeless on and off for over a decade – sleeping in the woods for much of this period.

He encountered what many of us have come to know as the affordable housing crisis in our Orange County. Thankfully, Pee-Wee is now housed in one of the very few homes in our community affordable with his fixed income of $750 per month.  But the problem lives on. He built this community, literally, and yet can barely afford to live here in his retirement. The struggle of his search for housing in many ways inspired the launch of this movement.

THE IDEA

There are nearly 5,000 extremely low-income families in Orange County with unmet housing needs. Pee Wee Homes has come together to be a part of the answer to this glaring call for affordable housing in our community. Homes that individuals with fixed income like Pee-Wee can afford; homes that allow elderly homeless individuals to age in place; homes that a single individual earning minimum wage can afford; and, importantly, homes that support independence within the context of community.

OUR 3 GOALS

Homes: Homes that are beautiful, accessible, and under 450 square feet. Homes for people without housing.

Community: building communities of mutual support with these new neighbors is vital to our two-part solution– not only do more people need housing in our community, but they need access to resources and support that will help keep them housed.

Equity: Residents of PeeWEE homes will pay no more than 30% of their income for their home each month.  Monthly payments will cover their rent and include a portion that get’s tucked away in a savings account for them!

OUR GOAL

We’ve already raised $100,000, and we only need $30,000 more to fund our first 3 homes!

We are asking YOU to help us raise the final $30,000 toward our first community– three homes, three lives, and the possibility of sparking a movement to help alleviate the desperate need for affordable, sustainable housing in our area and throughout the US.