The first of what Selma officials hope will be many homes for first-time buyers was lowered onto its foundation Tuesday.
A crane placed the prefabricated modular home that is part of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America on its foundation at 1425 Washington St.
The NACA-built modular home is energy efficient and tornado resistant and will serve as their office for sales of 27 more homes like it that will make up a planned neighborhood that is ideal for first-time homebuyers.
In a ceremony Tuesday, Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said they wanted to get that first home placed on its lot so potential homebuyers could see the quality of the homes.
NACA founder and CEO Bruce Marks said they are about to start construction of 27 more homes in the area and more are planned. And it is home ownership, not renting. Perkins said he wants to encourage ownership because “when people own their own home, they take care of their property, and they care about their neighborhood.”
NACA offers a path to homeownership through affordable homes and a process they say is friendly for first-time buyers.
“NACA’s transformative mortgage product, counseling services and character-based underwriting provide a model for how fair mortgage lending can successfully be made a reality for working families and people of color on a large scale,” according NACA’s website, www.naca.com.
Perkins said when he met Marks, he thought NACA “was too good to be true.” But Marks was persistent, and Perkins was convinced when he went to a homebuyers’ event in Conyers, Georgia.
A collaboration between Selma Housing Authority, Selma Planning and Development, PERC and many other agencies has been going on for a year, Perkins said. Bank of America is the money behind the NACA program to get people in new homes.
Selma Planning and Development Director Danielle Wooten said the city first planned to create a landbank, “but that would take longer than we wanted, so I reached out to Kennard Randolph, Housing Authority director, and asked him if they would be a part of the program.”
The Housing Authority buys lots, or dilapidated and abandoned houses that are owned by the state because of unpaid taxes. Owners legally acquire the properties and then build new homes on the lots.
The neighborhood is located in disaster area 1 from the January 2023 tornado and encompasses the area east of Broad Street.
One of the NACA consultants is Sebastian Jackson, a Selma native who grew up just a few blocks from where the first home is being built. Jackson said growing up in that neighborhood, he frequented Brown YMCA and hung out in the parking lot next to Aubrey Larkin’s Lewis Brother’s Funeral Home.
For anyone wanting to purchase a NACA-built home, a homebuyers' workshop will be held at City Hall on Feb. 10 from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. For more information and to reach out to Jackson, see the NACA website at www.naca.com.
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