A nonprofit group wants to buy as many as 25 vacant houses to help build homeownership in Peachtree Hills, a Charlotte neighborhood that is one of the worst-hit by the foreclosure crisis.
Self-Help, a nationally recognized, Durham-based community development organization, hopes to use the neighborhood as a pilot program that, if successful, could be replicated in other states. The goal: to stabilize a community where foreclosures have left scores of homes empty -- either boarded-up, for sale or abandoned to vandals and thieves.
"Peachtree Hills is in desperate need of attention, no doubt about it," said Evan Covington Chavez, Self-Help's director of real estate development. But it also has a foundation to build on.
