Durham Homeowner Gives Back With New House

Two years ago, Carline Jules had to help her 6-year-old son, Jaden, do his homework at night under the interior light of her car. It was their only shelter.  “He thought it was camping,” Carline says.

Carline, who immigrated to the United States from Haiti in 1981, earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1996. She moved to North Carolina for her job as a financial analyst.

After a difficult divorce Carline’s financial situation became unstable. She couldn’t pay her bills and many of her accounts went to collection.

“I couldn’t get up I was so depressed,” she says. “I didn’t care, I begged God to kill me. One day I came back to my house and every door was locked… I had no clothes, no food, no husband, no nothing.”

When Jaden left school for the day, the two would often spend afternoons together in the children’s area at The Streets at Southpoint. When the sky darkened, Carline would find a place where they could spend the night in the car.
 “I wasn’t really sleeping,” Carline says. Every time she heard footsteps or the engine of a car, she feared it was someone trying to take her child away from her.

Carline never let her son see her cry. And no one else knew he was homeless. Jaden was busy taking violin lessons and winning medals for freestyle swimming in the Durham Swim League.  “He went to school clean,” Carline says. “I even volunteered in the school.”

Carline insists that she made it through the tough times because she knew she had to for the sake of her youngest. Her oldest son, Brendan, was nearly grown and attending her alma mater as a journalism major.

A determined Carline eventually secured a job at Duke University. She paid off the debt she could, and started paying rent for a small apartment. The apartment, however, was in a distressed neighborhood. Carline didn’t want Jaden to grow up surrounded by its active gang culture.

Carline met Sam Miglarese, the director of community engagement for the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, through their children’s involvement in the Swimming with the Blue Devils program.  “I was so impressed with her,” Miglarese says. “I didn’t have any idea she was struggling with credit and housing issues.” After Carline shared her struggles to become finally secure, Sam told her about the Self-Help Credit Union.

When Culley Holderfield, a Self-Help home loan officer, called Carline in March 2007, she was expecting the worst. “I thought (Culley) would say, ‘If you live on bread and noodles for a year, then we’ll think about it.’ But he told me, ‘It’s not that bad. We will work with you.’”

Because of its second-chance philosophy, Self-Help was able to make a sound and responsible loan to Carline. “What’s most indicative to us is the most recent two years,” Culley says. “Our underwriting standards didn’t require her old collections to be paid off since she had reestablished herself financially with a steady job, rent history, and utilities history.”

A few months later, Carline finally found her dream home among the houses Self-Help built in the newly rehabilitated Walltown neighborhood that borders Duke’s East Campus. The close proximity was fitting, as the University had loaned Self-Help $4 million over the last several years to promote affordable housing in Durham. “I just stood there and said, ‘God, if you give me this house, I’ll find a way to do your work in it,’” Carline says.

The loan process can be tedious and tough, Culley says. “But she took that on and had a vision – she wanted to provide for her son.”

From the start, Carline promised she was willing to do whatever it took to get her family a house. On one occasion, an office in Maryland refused to fax or mail necessary documentation to her. Carline offered to drive up from North Carolina, pick up the paperwork, and drive back home before work the next morning.

“She didn’t have to do it,” Culley says. “But that force of will separates her from others.”

Through collaboration with the City of Durham, Duke Energy, Duke University, and the N.C. Housing Finance Agency, Self-Help was able to offer Carline a five percent, fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage.

Self-Help wasn’t what Carline expected, she says. Her mortgage payments are more affordable than what she was paying for her little apartment.

 “Without (my Self-Help loan), I might have had another mortgage at 14 percent, 18 percent… and after three months, I wouldn’t have been able to pay. This loan is so affordable, it’s unbelievable.”

A few weeks after moving into her home, a big welcome cake from Carline’s next-door neighbor sits on the kitchen counter and a few boxes remain unpacked. Carline busies herself with a variety of projects, from hanging up a mini-basketball hoop on Jaden’s bedroom door to caring for the basil, mint, and oregano now planted in her fenced-in backyard. The big backyard was a major selling point of the house - Jaden loves to play outside.

In Carline’s bedroom, blankets and pillows are strewn on the floor alongside decorating books. She sleeps on the floor, as she has already given her bed up to Duke University Hospital’s Host Homes program, providing the families of out-of-town patients with a comfortable, friendly place to stay.

“Trust me, it’s the least I could do,” Carline says. “It’s part of my bargain with God.”

Right now, the family of a cancer patient from Roanoke, Va. stays with the Jules. Carline and the mother hit it off from the start, she says, and she calls their presence “a blessing.”

The whole experience has been wonderful, Carline says. “Culley was great; I didn’t feel like I was being judged. He has an understanding of being low-income but still having dreams and desires.”

As Carline shows visitors around her new home, she seems barely able to contain her excitement. “Let’s go finish seeing my castle,” she says as she ushers guests from room to room. “That’s what I call it, my castle.”