Storychasing Easter’s Home and Affordable Housing
Members of our church in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, Caldwell Presbyterian, have been working for many years to address the affordable housing crisis in a novel and courageous way. “Easter’s Home” is the former education wing of Caldwell Church which is now ALMOST ready to be opened (in fall 2025) as an efficiency apartment complex for 21 Charlotte residents in need of affordable housing. Roof Above is one of the primary partner’s in the Easter’s Home project, and already operates multiple housing complexes as well as housing shelters for Charlotte residents today.
One of the members of our congregation asked about a new virtual tour / walk-through tour of Easter’s Home, now that it is nearing completion and opening, and this prompted me to gather some of the photographs as well as videos I’ve taken of the Easter’s Home project since we joined Caldwell in January 2023. Here are links to some of the photos, videos, and news articles I’ve shared and found.
On July 2, 2023, members of our congregation went on a tour of Easter’s Home to view the progress of the renovation, and I recorded a 7.5 minute video to document part of what we saw and heard.
Multiple news articles since 2022 have shared updates and news about Easter’s Home, and I’ve collected those (11 links as of today) in a public / shared Wakelet collection.
Those links include the book by our Pastor, Rev John Cleghorn, “Building Belonging: The Church’s Call to Create Community and House Our Neighbors.” That book and it’s accompanying congregational study guide (a free PDF) offer an outstanding deep dive not only into the background and history of Easter’s Home in Charlotte, but also the efforts of other Christian and community leaders around the United States seeking to find innovative ways to address affordable housing with the land and property owned by many church congregations and denominations.
To date (as far as I could find today) I’ve taken 42 photos of Easter’s Home since January 2023, in various stages of construction and renovation. I’ve shared all of these in a Flickr album, and images are sorted in reverse chronological order, with the newest first. Here are a few highlights.
One of the wonderful features of the original “Price Education Building” at Caldwell church is the stained glass window over the entry door. The architects for the renovation of Easter’s Home were able to preserve it, so it is visible from the 2nd floor as well as the entry area on the first floor.
The story of the stained glass window deserves its own video and audio podcast to share it fully, but I’ll attempt to summarize from what I remember our pastor, John Cleghorn, sharing during our most recent tour on June 22, 2025. Emma-Ford Adams was a young girl in the Caldwell Congregation who died in November 2022 during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Her family commissioned this beautiful stained glass window, which beautifully filtered the outside sunlight into classrooms in the Caldwell education building for many years. It’s so special that this unique and important part of the history of the Caldwell family is preserved within Easter’s Home.
Another important part of the story of Easter’s Home is the building’s history as a women’s shelter for women experiencing homelessness in 2013. The January 2023 Caldwell church newsletter shares some of that background. Caldwell member and elder, Jesca Yiskah-El, also highlighted that history in her testimony, sharing during our worship service on October 13, 2024. The Caldwell church community has been engaged in efforts to support and provide for those experiencing homelessness and hard times for many years, and those efforts continue today in the Easter’s Home project.
One sad footnote to this story of “storychasing” or documenting the renovation and construction of Easter’s Home regards some hand-drawn art and murals from the back stairwell of the Price Building. Back in May of 2025, members of our congregation took another short tour of Easter’s Home and Pastor John pointed out these inspirational works of stairwell art. I took two photographs of them at the time: “I Thought I Could” and “Ingredients for Success.” The artist depicted the journey of a caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly, making an analogy to the process of developing confidence and ability to escape poverty and homelessness.
Sadly, during our June 2025 tour of Easter’s Home, we discovered that the contractors had painted over these precious stairwell murals / art pieces. They had been specifically asked to PRESERVE them and not paint over them, but unfortunately sometimes instructions are not fully communicated and understood in renovation projects like this.
Perhaps this will become a sermon illustration down the road. Whether or not the stairwell art has been painted over, the STORIES, the HISTORY, and the ways the Price Building / Easter’s Home and the Caldwell Presbyterian Church community cannot ever be erased.
Shelly and I are thankful to be members of Caldwell and our “beloved community.” Truly we are striving to “build each other up in love – brick by brick.”
