Derrick White’s family has lived in the same Pine Bluff, Arkansas, home for more than 50 years. He came back to rehab it himself, spending everything he had on what he could reach. The foundation, sewer line, roof, and exterior wrapping eventually became more than his money and disability would allow.

“A lot of repairs, I did as much as I can, and my money was gone and I was in need,” he said.

That help arrived through WEpair, a home repair program launched in February 2026 by WE Center / WE Build with a grant the Housing Team at Communities Unlimited (CU) secured through the Walton Family Foundation. A few doors down, Brenda Bigham had been patching the same leaking roof for 17 years. She noticed the construction happening down the street, walked over, and three months later came home from work to find shingles in her yard.

“I was just overwhelmed,” she said. “I began to cry. Brand new roof. Just so grateful.”

CU’s work in Pine Bluff starts with a straightforward principle: the people who built these neighborhoods should have the opportunity to benefit when those neighborhoods come back. That means showing up before a homebuyer is ready, working through the barriers that make ownership feel out of reach, and finding local partners who already have roots in the community and are in it for the long haul.

WE Center / WE Build is that partner on 14th Street.

CU’s Housing Team provides homebuyer counseling and financial readiness support to prospective WE Build buyers, freeing Director Codney Washington to stay focused on construction. Funds from the Wealth Opportunities Realized through Homeownership (WORTH) grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation allowed WE Build to expand the DreamBuild modular housing model in Arkansas.

DreamBuild, pioneered by come.dream.come.build (CDCB), a Texas-based nonprofit, is a construction approach where home components are built in a shop and assembled on-site — cutting costs and training workers in the process. WE Center / WE Build brought that model to Pine Bluff. WEpair came from the Walton Family Foundation grant to CU supporting housing preservation and repair training for apprentices and young people.

The program started the way a lot of good ones do. During community engagement sessions, neighbors made clear that not everyone on the block was looking for a new home. Some just needed their existing one to hold together.

“You guys are building these houses over here,” Washington recalled them saying, “but what are you doing for us in the community?”

WEpair offers grants and loans for repairs — roofs, sewer lines, foundations, siding — built around the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Eight Healthy Homes Principles. For Washington, it’s not a side project.

“When we come into a community, we don’t want to just look at what we can build. We want to offer 360-degree wraparound services for everything that needs to be done.”

For White, the repairs are about more than the house. He’s one of the few families left on his stretch of 14th Street, and he talks about the work in terms of the relatives who built something here and the younger generation who might one day have something to come back to.

“I know it’ll probably mean a lot to my family, my ancestors that have passed on, and actually to the younger generation, because it’ll be a use for somebody.”

Bigham puts it plainly.

“It just means the world to me to have a brand new roof and not have to worry about the leaks anymore,” she said. “I’m excited that they decided to come over here and bring more value to our neighborhood by repairing our homes.”

That belief is what continues to drive the partnership’s focus on restoring stability, safety, and pride for homeowners across the neighborhood.

WE Build finished its first home in March 2025, then spent most of that year underground — literally. Lots that once held dilapidated structures had their sewer service cut after demolition, and getting it back required funding, engineers, permits, and months of work. Two homes in the 13-home Ward 3 development on West 14th Street are expected to be ready by end of May. Three more follow in July. Seven additional homes break ground in the second half of 2026.

As the pipeline grows, so does the list of neighbors asking whether they can actually buy one of the homes going up across the street. Many assume they won’t qualify before they ever ask. CU’s Housing Team is closing that gap.

“It is possible,” Washington said, “and that’s our goal to make it possible for them.”

A fuller update on the homes, the apprentices building them, and the families moving in is coming this summer.