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The #1 stated objective in the Winston Salem 2018 Housing Needs and Assessment commissioned by the City of Winston-Salem was “to close the 16,244-unit housing gap between affordable and available rental units.” Workforce housing is affordable and in close proximity to employment for individuals with low to moderate income. These individuals — including firemen, law enforcement personnel, teachers, hospital and medical personnel, city maintenance workers, and restaurant staff — are essential for healthy, safe communities. The covid pandemic revealed what should have been obvious all along: Essential workers are both valuable and highly vulnerable. The 2018 Assessment showed a gap of more than 8,000 housing units for these essential workers.
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The Assessment also noted a need “to employ a multi-dimensional funding strategy to bridge the housing shortage.” In 2020, a highly diverse group of Forsyth County developers, elected officials, pastors, hospital and non-profit executives, and essential workers came together to brainstorm a plan and identified the need for a citizen-led housing fund. Twin City Housing Capital was born from the simple recognition that innovative new tools — and broader community engagement — would be needed to close the gap in workforce housing.
Mission
Twin City Housing Capital (TCHC) is a non-profit, volunteer-led, community-driven strategic fund focused on providing the gap financing needed for the development of essential workforce housing within Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.
Board of Directors
Ned Erickson, Board Chair, is the Founding Director of the Winston-Salem Fellows Program. He is also the Director of Community Impact at Piedmont Federal Savings Bank, the Director of Strategic Initiatives for NC Fusion, the Director of Business Development for CITYWS cyber security, and owner of Lot 63 a coffee shop and brewery.
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Dr. Rev. Gary Gunderson, Board Co-Chair, is Professor of Religion and the Health of the Public, Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He founded the Innovation Quarter Community Lab that helped start TCHC. For almost two decades, he was in senior management of two major healthcare systems in Memphis and North Carolina, which demonstrated significantly different outcomes for patients and neighborhoods linked in “well-crafted webs of trust.”
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TCHC Advisors
Dr. Rev. George Banks serves as the Pastor of Goler AME Zion Church in Winston-Salem. Pastor Banks graduated from Wake Forest University, where he played football, and lives locally with his wife, Keisha (a graduate of Winston-Salem State University) and their three sons, Elijah, Josiah and Matthias.
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Mo McRae is Director of the Southeast at Urban Atlantic and a Winston-Salem Forsyth County Planning Board Member. Mo holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning. She worked extensively within the Washington, DC /Baltimore markets before relocating with her family to Winston-Salem. Mo is a recognized expert in Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and industry knowledge regarding development criteria, local, state, and federal requirements.
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Marcus Thomas is responsible for the planning, development, and management of Truliant's community engagement and philanthropic outreach programs. Prior to Truliant, Marcus was the senior program officer for grants and community impact at the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro and helped raise $32 million for the Greensboro Housing Fund to provide below-market interest rate loans for developers to build new units and preserve existing ones.
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