A s Raven Wright told her story, jaws dropped. Wright is a teacher in the Pine Bluff School District, but her literal path has been unusual, to say the least.
Wright had graduated college but she still needed a teaching credential to become a full-fledged teacher. Instead of tackling that with another year of college, she signed up with a university program that helps districts recruit people in her predicament with the promise that they will make progress toward getting their license to teach.
When Pine Bluff offered her a job, she said she felt moved by God to take it — even though it would require her to drive from near Batesville to Pine Bluff each day, a three-hour trip each way — so she could teach 11th-grade English.
“A lot of it had to do with availability,” said Wright, who received an English degree from Lyon’s College in Batesville. “I was told I was a great teaching candidate, but because I was a nontraditional teaching candidate, I would need to pursue my license.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
To improve her situation, she and her boyfriend moved to Searcy, cutting down the driving by an hour each way. But then she discovered Home Again, the program founded by the Rev. Matt Mosler, who pastors New Life Church in Pine Bluff.
Wright sat with Mosler at a recent school board meeting where the two talked about her situation and his program through which she is now able to live in Pine Bluff. Because of her commitment, Wright has signed a lease to live in one of the Home Again homes. Through the program, those who qualify pay below-market rent for a few years, during which they teach or otherwise serve the community. After that, they can buy their homes.
“We needed somehow to attract school teachers in the system who could not only teach … but be there to help students develop in so many ways,” Mosler said. “After two years, we’ll sell you that house for half of its appraised value, up to $50,000. You can go from relative poverty to equity in two years, but we don’t just want to build a house on a bad street. We want to put four or five houses on the same street. The idea is that if you get four or five families on the same street — all go to church, all go to work, all taking care of the neighborhood and all taking care of each other’s families — you change the culture … and make sure kids do their homework.”
That’s a high bar the reverend has set, but his program keeps plugging along, with the help of several individuals who don’t take a salary but who do put their hearts and souls into the plan to, as the Walton Foundation remarked, rebuild Pine Bluff one block at a time.
Pine Bluff has tons of vacant property and dilapidated houses. Some of that was fed by a drastic drop in population, and some came as the result of landlords who let properties go down to nothing. Once that happens, it’s hard to turn a neighborhood around.
But this program seeks to retake those areas by adding value to the neighborhoods and sustaining those neighborhoods through home ownership. This is one low-to-moderate income housing program that actually seems to be working. It won’t happen overnight, but then again the city didn’t get into this predicament overnight either.