The rural Georgia town of Warrenton hadn’t seen any new multifamily housing construction in decades. Willie Jackson, known as “Red” in his hometown, set out to change that several years ago. Jackson and his wife, Nancy Gresham-Jackson, decided to invest in high-quality, affordable rental housing, a critical unmet need for their neighbors in Warrenton. 

Since then, a larger developer has invested in rental units on the other side of town, but when Jackson and Gresham-Jackson got started, they certainly had a novel idea.

Warrenton is a small town, home to about 2,000 people. Eleven miles from the next nearest town, and 100 miles from Atlanta, Warrenton has just one stop light but no hospital, no fast food, and no hotel. It’s a place, Jackson said, where everybody knows everybody. 

“I love Warrenton. The people are nice, friendly, quiet and peaceful,” said Jackson. “You don’t have to lock your doors. It would be like a Mayberry-type of town.”

While Warrenton’s job market may not indicate an influx of new labor to the area, the people who already live here have endured substandard, weathered housing for years. So if private developers haven’t been committed to investing in new construction, and families have nowhere to go as their homes fall into structural disrepair, what are the alternatives? The prospects had been looking grim. 

They began with a single triplex and over the course of a few years added a series of duplexes and a flea market. Soon their portfolio will include a new laundromat for the town.

“We just want to upgrade the standard of living,” said Jackson. “I’m from Warrenton. I’ve seen the burden that finding affordable housing puts on people. I’ve been working at this for 20 years, to try and provide quality, affordable housing to the community I’m from.”

Building in a town that hasn’t seen new construction for years can be challenging, particularly when it comes to financing. Jackson and Gresham-Jackson relied on their own finances for the first triplex, but still needed a lender to make it happen. That was tricky without a comparable property in the area for the appraisal.

“We got lucky, in that a local banker gave us a loan,” Gresham-Jackson said. “But if it had not been for him, we couldn’t have gone conventional because there were no comparable projects in the community.”

Once the triplex was complete, they set their sights on redeveloping a trailer park. The one-acre park had four trailers on it that Gresham-Jackson described as “deplorable.” Financing the project required a new type of support, and they found it in the Housing Assistance Council (HAC). 

HAC is a national nonprofit and a community development financial institution (CDFI) that offers training, technical assistance and financing solutions that support affordable housing initiatives in rural areas. Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and CDFI federal assistance funds, HAC is able to offer below-market financing options that are particularly valuable in rural areas, especially within low-income communities like Warrenton where the median household income is less than $35,000.

“We told them our vision to transform this trailer park into quality, affordable housing and they believed in us. They knew we were serious,” Gresham-Jackson said. “We were able to get financing based on rental income coming from the duplex units as opposed to sales in the market.”

Two rounds of financing with an initial $160,000 loan followed by a $344,000 loan, allowed Jackson and Gresham-Jackson to replace those once-deplorable mobile homes with a trio of new duplexes. A fourth is in the works, which means that when the duplex community is complete it will have effectively doubled the number of rental units available to those in Warrenton. The two-bedroom, one-bath units rent for about $800 a month. And every unit is occupied. 

“I thank God I was raised here and I want to do something special and leave a legacy that my kids and our whole community can be proud of,” said Jackson. “I hope to one day build a subdivision of homes that are less than $200,000, so owners can build their wealth and the wealth of their families.”

Gresham-Jackson said the improvements don’t go unnoticed by those living in Warrenton. Their initial struggle, she said, has given way to meaningful progress. 

“We can see the difference in not only people’s lives but visibly in the community,” said Gresham-Jackson. “You can see these brand new buildings where that horrible old trailer park used to be. That’s the change we’re focused on.”