No-cost repairs help residents hold on to homes and lower their utility bills

June Springs lives on the other side of the tracks — literally. Her home in West Davidson, a historically Black neighborhood, is just across the railroad tracks from Davidson College.

Springs is 84. She’s lived in this yellow, one story house since she was born. She raised her four children here.

“That's what I heat with," she says, pointing to an old propane furnace in the corner of her bedroom. There’s another one behind a chair in the living room. She has window units for air conditioning. There’s hardly any insulation in the walls.

It's too expensive for her to keep the A/C running in the summer. In the winter, those two furnaces can’t heat the whole house, which means maintaining a comfortable — and safe — temperature in her 100-year-old home is close to impossible.

That, however, is about to change.

“It's an older house, so it has all the little quirks of that,” said Edward McLean, the director of construction at Rebuilding Together. “One of the biggest things is the heat right now, because it doesn't have the ability to heat every room. We're going to try to take care of that."

Rebuilding Together of Greater Charlotte provides free home repairs for low-income homeowners. The organization also leavea the home more energy efficient than they found it — adding insulation, caulking around the windows and electrical upgrades.

Insulation is a critical, but often overlooked, part of an energy-efficient home. Insulation traps A/C or heat inside, keeping indoor temperatures comfortable without placing excessive demand on the thermostat.

“It's more about windows and doors and insulation than it is the building itself,” said Beth Morrison-North, the director of Rebuilding Together.

Properly sealed windows and insulation aren’t cheap. Professional caulking services can cost up to $15 per foot — $1,500 for an entire house, and that’s a conservative estimate. Installing insulation in an attic can be over $1,000.

Stella Mackler

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WFAE

“The challenge for so many homeowners is they don't have the funds or the ability to do this kind of weatherization and sealing themselves,” said Morrison-North. “They definitely don't have enough money to pay for a new unit.”

That’s where Rebuilding Together comes in — weatherizing, adding insulation, and installing proper heating and cooling systems, among other repairs. The organization gets funding from Charlotte, North Carolina’s Housing Finance Agency, and a variety of private donors like Wells Fargo and Lowe's.

“Without programs like ours and others in the city to help to provide those critical repairs that let homeowners continue to stay in their home in a safe and healthy environment, they're a lot of times either forced to live in a really, really unsafe condition, or sell their home,” Morrison-North said.

McLean is doing a property assessment at Springs’ house, examining the repairs she applied for, central air and proper heating, and other potential fixes.

“There's no insulation in the crawl space,” McLean said. “So it wouldn't be a great use of the money to install a new HVAC system and then not put any insulation down there. And we're going to double-check the attic as well to make sure it's got adequate insulation."

Springs got a screen door in the kitchen last week, and said she can feel the difference.

“It's cooler back there when you go in the kitchen to cook,” Springs said. “It'd be boiling hot ... standing there.”

Springs is not thinking about selling. Her whole life is in this home. She plans to keep working with Rebuilding Together to get air-conditioning and better heating. Until then, she’s working on a 1,000-piece puzzle to keep her mind off the weather.

“I do what I need to do — stay cool, try to drink water, plenty of water, and just do work,” Springs said. “Take it in one day at a time.”