(Tribune News Service) — For nearly 30 years, James “Bro” Watson has been known as “the handyman around Southeast Raleigh.”

He’s the guy you call to mow your lawn or fix a leaky faucet. As a maintenance supervisor for a local housing provider, he also works 10-hour shifts, sometimes weekends, servicing 176 units around town.

But now, at 62, after a lifetime of renting, this Army veteran has his own place.

This spring, he closed on his first home: a traditional ranch house on Southgate Drive, built in 1976, that’s recently been gutted, remodeled and freshly painted a shade of Sherwin-Williams cool gray.

“Yes, ma’am. This is my forever home,” he says, standing on his quarter-acre lot, wearing his favorite 101st Airborne cap, just a few blocks around the corner from his sister’s place, and close to where he grew up.

It even comes with its own fenced backyard and outdoor shed with enough room for his tools and new John Deere sit-on mower. He surveys his property, the smell of fresh-cut grass wafting in the air.

“You can’t ask for anything more right here.”

Watson is the first owner to buy a home though the Raleigh Area Land Trust (RALT). He’s their “proof of concept” after the trust launched in 2019, with a $260,000 seed loan from the City of Raleigh and a handful of angel donors, to assist with the region’s growing affordability crisis.

As rising housing costs crush many renters’ home-ownership dreams across the Triangle, the trust’s aim is to increase affordable housing options for low-income workers. The blueprint: a community land trust, or shared equity model.

Watson purchased the three-bedroom, one-bathroom house with down-payment assistance for just under $200,000 — below market value. His mortgage is around $850 a month. But as part of the deal, the trust retains permanent ownership of the land. Watson leases the land at a nominal rate — around $50 a month — for a term of 99 years. He also pays reduced property taxes.

With the cost of the land removed, advocates say, the home is more affordable. It’s also “recycled” back into the trust when he decides to sell, “ensuring the home remains affordable in perpetuity.”

A 1970s affordable-housing model

Community land trusts, or CLTs, have been around as a successful model for affordable housing since the 1970s. But they’ve gained renewed interest of late — both in Raleigh and nationally — as mortgage rates and house prices have soared in recent years.

While prices are slowly cooling, Wake County’s median sale price was still $485,000 in May, according to the latest data from Triangle MLS. The median income of a family now only reaches 61% of the income they would need to afford a median-price house at prevailing mortgage rates — a 10.3% drop year-over-year.

“These are productive citizens that are vital to our city,” says RALT’s founder and interim executive director Rhett Fussell. “They should be able to live and work in our town.”

A civil engineer by day, the long-time Raleigh resident observed a gap in the market. Organizations like DHIC provide low-income rentals, but there weren’t many options for paths to homeownership. While Chapel Hill and Durham have some of the nation’s oldest land trusts, Raleigh had somehow failed to follow suit.

So he decided to set one up himself, using his longtime Raleigh connections for funding and resources. He says the trust serves to fill a void in today’s housing market by providing “missing middle” housing. It specifically targets individuals and families, like Watson, earning 50% to 80% of the area median income — between $37,450 and $113,000 — so they can remain living in their communities without fear of being displaced.

So far, it’s earmarked four homes — including Watson’s — to buy and sell below market value. It’s also partnered with Raleigh Raised Development and Southeast Raleigh Promise to build a 17-unit affordable housing subdivision called the Cottages of Idlewild.

Fussell says he plans to scale quickly: 100 affordable homes over the next five years. “That’s the goal,” he says. “It’s obviously it’s a small piece of the affordable housing spectrum, but it’s critical.”

‘Proof of concept’

For Watson, it’s been life changing.

Born in Jackson County, he moved to Southeast Raleigh when he was 7 and grew up in Walnut Terrace, an old housing complex on McCauley Street. Apart from a six-year stint in the 1980s, serving in the Army stationed in Kentucky, he’s lived here ever since. His roots go deep: “My mother, Lucille Watson, was the first Black female bus driver for the city of Raleigh.”

For nearly 21 years, he rented a one-bedroom apartment on Pender Street, picking up jobs cutting grass and making repairs. He always paid on time, $650 a month. Except for when he hit a rough patch, somewhere in his early 50s, “drinking and getting high.”

At one point, he faced living in a half-way house. But after completing a 90-day rehab program, he managed to turn his life around.

“I finally woke up one morning and decided I was tired,” he says, now 13 years sober. He even went back to school, enrolling at Wake Tech Community College, completing a total of 11 certifications: heating and air and plumbing among them.

He’s now got each of those pieces of paper separately framed, ready to be hung in his new office, right alongside photos of his children. Every night, he races home from work to finish unpacking. He’s also putting the final touches on his latest house project: a new back deck and gazebo for his first-ever housewarming party. He often doesn’t stop working until late in the night.

“This is a giant step forward for me,” Watson says. “It’s given me something I haven’t had in a long time. Rest. Peace. Something you can call your own.”

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