Building Community Through Affordable Housing in Fuquay-Varina

When Betty Beidleman Rush moved to Fuquay-Varina, NC, in 1960, it was a one-stoplight town with few paved streets. She, like many of her fellow teachers at the historically African-American Consolidated School, lived with the families she taught. “The principal told me I had to live in town, but there were no rentals and few affordable homes,” she recalls. But the community was strong. In 1962, neighborhood men pitched in to build the Pine Acres Community Center, at the time the local center of the civil rights movement and neighborhood polling place, and today host of an after-school and summer program for children.

Over time, tobacco farming and the textile industry declined, and Fuquay-Varina fell on hard times. As unemployment grew, abandoned homes and businesses fell into disrepair. Drugs were rampant in neighborhood streets and parks.

But the neighborhood once again banded together. Citizens Against Drugs helped to reclaim their streets and clean up the community. The Fuquay-Varina Community Development Corporation worked with the Wake County Department of Housing and Community Revitalization to provide early funding and impetus for ongoing revitalization. The partners renovated the Consolidated School, which is now used as an early childhood education center and a subsidized apartment complex for seniors. Generations can mingle in a shared garden, strengthening the sense of community.

The partners began to develop and renovate affordable housing in the neighborhood. They invested more than $2 million in land purchase, housing development and infrastructure. They brought Self-Help on board to design and build homes and to offer financing for buyers.

Self-Help built seven energy-efficient, single-family homes in the Consolidated School Neighborhood, all designed to complement the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood. Self-Help and its partners develop affordable homes in distressed neighborhoods all across North Carolina, supporting revitalization of flagging communities and creating new homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income families.

Thanks to the determination of the community and the vision of these many partners, the Consolidated School Neighborhood is vital and growing. The streets are paved and well lit. Sidewalks now run throughout the neighborhood, connecting homes, schools and parks. Betty Beidleman Rush smiles as she looks out at the neighborhood. “If you can agree and unite, you can move forward. That’s what it takes to make a real positive difference. And that’s what happened here.”