WILMINGTON – Down a residential street off U.S. 74, a 400-square-foot home sits vacant in the middle of a muddy and bare 4-acre lot.
Surrounded by nothing, two empty white rocking chairs move gently to and fro on the walk-up front porch as the wind passes. Through the front door, the home is fully furnished, with brand new appliances, made-up beds and enough dishes to cook a decent meal.
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This single home won’t be lonely forever though. A group is now fundraising to turn the acreage into a gated, pedestrian community providing a total of 32 low-cost, forever homes to the homeless and disabled. An anonymous donor has agreed to pay for 16 of them – a $640,000 donation – if the group can secure matches for the other half.
Now, the group needs roughly $1 million for infrastructure, which it hopes to secure through grants, and sponsors for four more houses to bring the vision to life.
The project is dubbed “Eden Village,” a biblical reference to the Garden of Eden and Psalm verse: “They cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where one could settle.”
The homes will go to single adults who, for at least a year, have suffered from homelessness in the tri-county area while simultaneously struggling with a chronic, physical or mental illness.
Each house will come landscaped and furnished, from the bed and linens to the pots and pans. It puts the renter back just $300 a month, a cost that will never go up for the rest of their lives.
The fixed fee is a vital part of the success behind Missouri’s Eden Village, the community on which this project is modeled.
“A lot of people that are on disability, it’s not enough money to own a home or to even rent a home, really,” Donna Evans, a social worker on the project, said. “What happens is a lot of them wind up homeless and because of their illness or whatever, they’re in and out of the ER and just sort of struggle.”
New Hanover Regional Medical Center anesthesiologist Tom Dalton and his wife Kim, a nurse, lead the project.
Through medical mission work with the impoverished, and after witnessing overwhelming poverty in the slums of Kenya, Dalton started studying the connection between housing and healthcare, pulling local data from the hospital. As he studied the statistics, he found one patient who was admitted 246 times in three years, and not always for reasons that called for that degree of medical care.
At Eden Village, people with such experiences will finally have a stable roof over their head and a place to receive constant care under the watchful eye of onsite medical personnel, including physicians, nurses, mental health support and substance abuse support. Residents are promised stable living circumstances, sheltered from the sometimes harsh conditions of the outdoors with adequate access to nutrition and a warm bed.
The average person who is homeless is expected to live only until age 50. That’s 20 years less than the housed population’s life expectancy, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.
“Housing is healthcare,” Dalton said. “People with chronic conditions have a very difficult time healing. So you take blood pressure and diabetes and basic surgery, and then send folks out in a tent or out on the street to heal – they just come back.”
People who are chronically homeless also have little sense of community, something Dalton hopes to create in Eden Village.
“They’ve lost contact with their families, their church, their jobs,” Dalton said. “When you get isolated like that, it is a very, very difficult place.”
For that reason, Eden Village will place a heavy focus on support systems. Social work case managers will set up offices on campus, and community coordinators will organize social and personal enrichment activities and skills training. A community space will offer sober living activities, a library and computer lab, a laundry room and a food bank.
Eden Village is designed to be a permanent fix to homelessness, for those who most need it. The residents will never have to worry about what comes next. Due to their health circumstances, the leaders accept it is unlikely residents would ever graduate from the program or become fully independent.
“You follow the rules, you get to stay forever,” Dalton said. “It’s your home.”
‘This is a permanent fix’
Wilmington’s Eden Village is a replica of Springfield, Missouri’s Eden Village, which opened in 2018. There was already a double connection between the original Eden Village and the port city; Dalton and his wife are both from Springfield, and the founder of Eden Village has a brother, Tom Brown, who happened to live closeby. A certified public accountant, Brown is now managing the finances of the Wilmington remake.
“It is just a great model so we’re not making any of this up,” Dalton said. “We are merely taking their rules and their systems.”
Missouri’s Eden Village has two locations and is in the process of opening two more. The Wilmington model could duplicate in the future as well. There’s potential for multiple communities to exist with 20 to 40 units each.
Once Dalton had narrowed down the model for how it would help the homeless, it was time to find the land. Matt Scharf of Real Properties sold 4.2 acres for the project, located near the Wilmington Airport on Kornegay Avenue, for $250,000 – a savings of more than $100,000. The property is worth $360,000, according to Dalton.
The site is conveniently located across from the future Wilmington Salvation Army headquarters. The charitable organization will provide transportation, job training, health services and educational opportunities for Eden Village residents.
A garden will make up a quarter of the lot. Residents will work alongside volunteers to grow their own food. When residents help in the garden, or assist in other ways around the complex to keep it clean and maintained, they can earn community credit for the onsite store.
However, this overall vision is on hold until the funding is finalized.
“We are just now going to sit back and raise money,” Dalton said.
No one can live on the campus until the water, sewer and electrical infrastructure is built, a cost of $987,000. Dalton said the group has applied for multiple grants to assist.
Once the full funding is available, the project can come into existence rather quickly. Already, 12 of 32 homes are sponsored and a match for 16 homes is secured. The tiny homes are prebuilt in Laurinburg and arrive on a trailer. Late last week, the first home was lifted and placed onto a foundation on the property. Community members were invited to tour the site Saturday during Eden Village’s first public walk-through.
“These prebuilt modular homes are really incredible,” Dalton said. “They come in, all the appliances are in, all of it is finished off and they set it on a foundation.”
One tiny home comes with a price tag of about $45,000. Companies and individuals can sponsor a home for $40,000. People can also donate smaller dollar amounts online or volunteer for committees.
“I think people really want to help homeless people. They don’t know how, and this a permanent fix – not just a meal and then tomorrow you’re hungry again,” Evans said. “I feel like, ‘OK, now, I’m really helping homeless people.’”
Send tips and comments to Alex Sands at alexandria@localdailymedia.com
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