WS Chronicle

For a decade Whole Man Ministries’ Housing 4 Our Heroes program has been renovating abandoned houses in order to provide affordable housing for displaced veterans in Winston-Salem. With help from volunteers from Love Out Loud’s Student Camp, earlier this week Whole Man Ministries kicked off their biggest project yet. 

On Monday, July 10, students started removing the roof on property located on University Parkway which includes three apartments and one three-bedroom house. Pastor Barry Washington, founder  of Housing 4 Our Heroes, said when all the renovations are complete, the project could potentially benefit 17 individuals. “Anytime you can potentially take 17 people off the street, that’s huge,” Washington said. 

Most of the cost for the project project will be funded by a $450,000 grant from the City of Winston-Salem. To renovate the entire property will cost about $600,000. 

Housing 4 Our Heroes was started in 2013 with several renovated duplexes on Cameron Avenue. In 2019, the program completed a home on Penden Street for Eugene Mitchell, who is a veteran of the U.S. military. Washington said he started the program after volunteering at Samaritan Ministries and coming in contact with five homeless men who were all veterans. In the beginning Houses 4 Heroes provided transitional housing for veterans, but now the program provides permanent housing. 

“I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when we started, but I knew we could make a difference,” Washington said. “I set out at the time just to get a house and do what you call transitional housing, but we ended up buying a property that was connected to another property that was connected to a duplex so we decided to do permanent housing instead and we’ve been doing this work ever since.”

Since 2018 campers from Love Out Loud’s Student Camp have come and lent a helping hand to Houses 4 Our Heroes during the summer. Love Out Loud is a collective of more than 80 churches, groups and individuals, with a mission to transform the city with the love of Christ by connecting and mobilizing its people and resources. 

This year ten local students helped kick off the program’s latest project. After removing most of the old shingles from the roof, students enjoyed free ice cream and Italian ice from JoJo’s Homemade Ice Cream. While enjoying his ice cream, Jordan Shegog, who will be attending North Carolina A&T State University in the fall, said since veterans give so much to protect our country, it feels good to give them a little something in return. 

“These houses we’re working on are for veterans and since they’ve given so much to their community and their country, it’s good to give back to them in any way we can,” Shegog said. “I was raised in a pretty well-off family, we’ve all been highly educated and we all have  lived spiritual lives, so we understand what we’re given, we need to give back to whoever we can and this is one of the ways I do that.” 

For more information on Whole Man Ministries’ Houses 4 Our Heroes program visit www.wholemanministries.com.