Building a robust community goes beyond the purchasing of a home. The Community Reinvestment Project also helps homeowners to beautify their property, to not only keep it, but increase its value and even expand it.
Through zero interest, fully forgivable loans, and property tax grants, homeowners are given the financial space and resources to achieve true generational wealth.
“This has been my mission, to be able to say, ‘Grandpa, here’s your deed. You don’t owe nothing. I got you.’” – Myron Curry
Myron Curry is a lifelong Central District resident, artist and entrepreneur. Upon the end of a stint in federal prison, Myron emerged with one goal: save his 94 year old grandfather’s home.
While incarcerated, Myron began taking every class available, and eventually began to instruct classes himself. He would often advise his mother and grandfather about the importance of wills and trusts, for his family, and their community at large.
“For many Black families in the Central District, a lot of grandparents have a will but not a trust. What happens, as in my grandfather’s situation, is they bought their house in the 1960s for $10,000, but it’s now valued at $800,000 or more. However, without proper estate planning and protections, families face significant financial burdens including capital gains and property taxes, reverse mortgages and other costly obligations that can force them to sell or lose these generational homes.
One of the most devastating factors has been property taxation calculations based not on the current use of the land, but on its maximum property potential. For example, a single-family home on a 5,000 square foot lot is taxed as though it contains five
housing units, even if only one exists.”
This inequity places a disproportionate financial burden on long-standing residents and accelerates the widespread gentrification and displacement that has come to be a feature of neighborhoods like the Central District.
Myron, with the support of Caleb Jackson at Resource Equity and many more, worked out a creative strategy to pay down his family’s reverse mortgage, gain assistance through the Community Reinvestment Program, build two ADUs, and use the rental income to pay down the interest on the home. And now they are preserving and growing the generational wealth available to so many other Americans.
“My grandfather can age in place. I have the opportunity to plan for my mother who is also about to retire, and I can start to think about my own future.”
