The Knight Foundation has awarded West Side Community Land Trust a $600,000 grant to continue its work in developing affordable housing.
The grant will help fund the Nathanael Carr Senior Community, a 4.5 acre land site that will house 120 units of affordable, permanent living.
Operational expenses and program enhancements, including preparing residents to be homebuyers, are a few expenses the grant will cover.
A developer was looking to acquire the land until neighbors reached out to West Side Community Land Trust to purchase the land that will soon house the non-profit’s largest project to date.
“With our new investment, the Land Trust will continue to to engage Charlotteans in the process of building a more livable, inclusive and successful Historic West End,” Charles Thomas, director of the Knight Foundation in Charlotte said in a statement.
West Side Community Land Trust was founded in 2017 by community members who wanted to combat gentrification and displacement.
The following year, the Knight Foundation made its first investment into the non-profit organization.
“A lot of times people don’t see the vision and the Knight Foundation bought into it,” Charis Blackmon, executive director of the West Side Community Land Trust, told QCity Metro.
“They believed in the power of community members to be the creators of their own solutions.”
Awesome and very informative and well written!
It is a great concept.
Hey please let the community know that they will never owned the land. Also, they used conventional loans which is at a higher interest rate.
Again it a good concept as far as housing, but let the community know the truth.