When Jerome "Nicky" Nixon came upon a vacant building downtown, he wasn't thinking about renovations, investment property or turning it into an Airbnb.
He was just looking for a safe place for him and his dog. And as a self-described transient, Nixon knew such spots were hard to come by.
This particular property -- a building with five small apartments once rented to low-income residents -- looked abandoned. So Nixon spent the night inside one and formulated a plan.
"I got the lay of the land and thought 'This could work,'" Nixon said. "My daughter told me, 'Dad, they call that squatting.'"
He cleaned up trash, pulled weeds and bagged up used drug paraphernalia. And despite his efforts to remain invisible, Nixon caught the attention of police and city inspectors. He was charged with trespassing and forced to leave.
Nothing odd about that. Hundreds of such citations are written every year.
But Nixon's court date inadvertently set in motion a series of events that brought attention to the building -- and a plan approved by City Council last week to reclaim it.
"Yeah, it does come back to him," said Dan Rose, a primary architect of an innovative proposal to turn the building into low-income housing. "He did see something in it.
"He led us to that place."
Sensing opportunity
From the front, the horseshoe-shaped building resembles an old-time motor lodge. Each of its five units faces a courtyard, a configuration which gives it a communal feel.
The building was acquired in 2001 by a now defunct organization called the Housing Partnership of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County with the help of a $426,400 loan from the city.
At that point, a now defunct nonprofit called the Housing Partnership was booming. The partnership owned several houses along North Spring and Second streets and helped more than 200 families buy affordable homes in Forsyth County.
But time eventually catches up with everyone -- and everything. A slow economy forced the partnership into a self-imposed suspension in 2010 and some of its properties were subsequently sold.
Jane Milner, the president of the Housing Partnership, made sure that the property taxes were paid but the loan payments were stopped when the organization ceased operations.
The city, as was its right, attached a lien on the North Spring Street building for the remaining $156,869 balance.
An out-of-town developer made a serious purchase offer in 2018, but that deal fell through even though the City Council voted to forgive the loan balance and remove the lien. Out of sight and out of mind, the building fell into disrepair. Water and electric service were cut off years ago and the units became attractive only to a handful of transients and drug addicts.
That's where Nixon turned into an unlikely catalyst for a new approach to affordable housing. Police charged him in October 2022 with misdemeanor burglary and second-degree trespassing. Most of those cases result in suspended (or time served) sentences after the defendant spends a night or two in jail.
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No harm done.
But Jerome Nixon wasn't just any run-of-the-mill defendant. He's a college-educated free spirit, a dapper 60-something with a gypsy-like lifestyle.
And he decided to fight back.
Serendipitously, Nixon met Rose, a professor at Winston-Salem State and a fierce advocate for fair, affordable housing, a few weeks later during a roundtable discussion about evictions.
He told Rose what had happened and asked for help. He explained that police couldn't even tell him who owned the building.
"I said, 'Well let's find out together,'" Rose recalled.
Formulating a plan
Because of his work with the Housing Justice Now organization, Rose knows plenty about property law. And being a professor, he's no stranger to research.
So it didn't take him long to find Milner. Once Rose explained the charges against Nixon, he and Milner began trying to convince prosecutors to drop the case.
It took a while, but they succeeded. And somewhere along the way, a plan was formed to give the North Spring Street building a new lease on life within its original purpose.
Real estate speculators called from time to time but nothing concrete other than the 2018 offer.
Her preference all along, Milner said, was to transfer ownership to another nonprofit. Ideally one that serves the homeless and works to provide affordable housing. "But that's up to the city," she said in 2023.
Meanwhile, Rose, Wake Forest law professor Steve Vigil and a few others began working on details for a proposal to convert the building property into a co-op governed by residents and a representative from a newly formed limited-liability corporation called the Spring Street Co-op.
Each of five residents would pay up to $400 a month in rent, Vigil told the City Council in August, and in doing so, a portion would be set aside in a portable savings account with a ceiling of $2,000 or $3,000. "It looks like equity," said Vigil.
Similar set-ups are working in Detroit, Seattle and Asheville; there's no reason it can't work here, too.
With Milner's blessing, Spring Street Co-Op secured the support of the Winston-Salem Foundation, an agreement from Piedmont Federal for a $210,000 loan for repairs and wrote out a 61-page plan with inspector's reports and cost estimates.
The first -- and biggest -- hurdle would be convincing the City Council to forgive the loan balance. And despite some misgivings from some elected officials, the Spring Street Co-op cleared that obstacle last Monday by a 6-1 vote.
"I think we're going to start cooking now," Rose said. "It's all lined up for the dominoes to start falling."
And in a roundabout way, it all began with a man named Jerome Nixon who was just looking for a safe place to stay.
"I don't think it'll be the last we hear of him," Rose said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he applied to become a resident."
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@scottsextonwsj
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