Whole Man Ministries of North Carolina is giving new life to duplex buildings once marked for demolition.
The nonprofit organization is teaming up with several businesses and other groups to rehab apartments to provide affordable housing for the homeless, primarily military veterans.
“We have worked with the homeless,” Pastor Barry Washington, the executive director of Whole Man Ministries. “We have collaborated with them, but we have never provided housing for the homeless before.”
Whole Man Ministries, based in Winston-Salem, also has a church, food bank, clothing bank, computer lab, an after-school program, as well as a jail and prison-mentoring program.
Washington said that the new project became his vision after he saw that some veterans in the local community had no place to call home.
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“It started getting to me,” he said.
Whole Man Ministries has purchased two duplex buildings at 1437 and 1439 Cameron Avenue from SunTrust Bank to renovate them for homeless veterans. The organization hopes to buy three additional buildings on the same street for more homeless veterans and people who fall into the chronic homeless category.
The purchased buildings will be rehabbed as duplexes, offering a total of four rental apartments. Each building will house two units, and one of them will be handicap-accessible. The buildings had been on the City of Winston-Salem’s demolition list.
Washington estimates that the total cost to renovate the two buildings will be $70,000.
According to the 2013 “Point in Time” count, an annual homeless assessment required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of homeless military veterans has dropped 49 percent since 2007 in Forsyth County. Total homelessness in the county has dropped 40 percent since 2012, after four consecutive years of increases.
Some of the housing for veterans in Forsyth County includes the Veterans Helping Veterans Heal, a 24-bed transitional housing program. Veterans can live in the facility for up to two years.
“We provide one level of care, and not all veterans need the same level of care,” said Russell Cole, the operations director for Veterans Helping Veterans Heal.
Cole said that because veterans have a variety of needs, it’s logical to have a variety of options for them.
Washington said that he plans to work with groups such as Veterans Helping Veterans Heal to find veterans for the apartments.
“They would be screened,” Washington said. “We want to put people in them that are ready. We want to make sure that they are responsible and that they are not going to be a nuisance or anything to the neighborhood.”
Cole said he looked forward to working with Whole Man Ministries.
Performance & Shoe Repair by Wyatt & Dad and The Home Depot are two of several companies that have volunteered to help Washington with his rehab project.
“I like it and I like what he does so I help out when I can with his ministry,” said Tony Wyatt, the president and co-owner of Wyatt & Dad.
He said he has worked with Washington on several different projects.
Wyatt met Washington while doing charitable work as a member of the Western North Carolina board of the Men and Women of Action, a nonprofit group of volunteers who use skills in building project assignments and disaster relief.
“I’m using my resources at Men & Women of Action to get some volunteers to come in and help, and get a building materials list,” Wyatt said of the Whole Man Ministries project. “We’re going to go in and do the demolition and reconstruction to a certain point.”
He said that employees at Wyatt & Dad, including his brother, Ricky Wyatt, the company’s co-owner, will also be on site to help rehab the apartments.
The Home Depot stores in Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point are on board, said Tracy Alderman, the operations assistant manager for The Home Depot store on Hanes Mall Boulevard.
“In 2011, The Home Depot Foundation took on a new mission to ensure that every veteran has a safe place to call home,” Alderman said.
She doesn’t know the total amount of materials The Home Depot employees will be able to use for the Whole Man Ministries’ project, but hopes to make the buildings more energy efficient, which will include some insulation and windows.
“And we’re definitely doing a garden so that they can have something to do during the day,” she said of veterans who would live in the apartments.
Washington said the garden, which would go between the buildings, would be therapeutic and help to feed veterans as well as provide them with exercise.
“Kind of keep their mind and their body a little serene,” he said.
Students from the plumbing and carpentry programs at Forsyth Technical Community College will work on the apartments. The programs will just provide labor resources for the project.
“We enjoy taking the students out on live projects,” said Matthew Beverly, a program coordinator in the plumbing program at Forsyth Tech. “It’s a learning environment for them.”
In terms of the plumbing work, Beverly said his plan is to completely redo the water pipe and drainage system so that the apartments will have new plumbing.
Winston-Salem is interested in Whole Man Ministries rehab program and has committed to try to work with the organization through one of the city’s ongoing rehab programs, said Ritchie Brooks, the city’s director of community and business development.
Brooks said that his concern with any group would be its capacity to do the rehab work and its track record in doing similar type work. He also said that he would be concerned about management of the apartments after the rehab.
“Generally if you can get volunteers and have some good supervision or a good contractor, you can make it through the rehab pretty successfully,” Brooks said. “But after that rehab, it’s the management portion that would still be of a concern — being able to adequately do that so that it’s not going to be a burden or have some negative impact on the community.”
Washington said that Whole Man Ministries plans to use a local real-estate company to manage the properties.
Brooks also said that Winston-Salem has provided some extensive assistance in the area of housing for veterans so city officials would certainly want to make sure there was no duplication of services.
But, he said, that may not be a major concern because he believes there is always a need for affordable and decent housing for low- and-moderate-income people and other populations.
“I applaud them for their efforts, and we support what they are attempting to do,” Brooks said of Whole Man Ministries.
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