Angelique Robinson and her seven children were getting ready for bed when the Middlebury resident thought she smelled smoke. She immediately went upstairs to check on her kids and saw flames. Robinson rushed six of the children to her car but had to go back inside to retrieve one of her sons.
By the time the two made it out, the back of the house was ablaze and, before she knew it, the whole structure was engulfed in flames.
“Honestly, I didn’t think that it was gonna be that big of a fire,” Robinson said.
She and her children were forced to relocate to a hotel without such belongings as her ID and bank cards. But 12 days later, on Dec. 16, her family received emergency housing assistance from The Well Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit that restores houses in the Middlebury neighborhood, among other services.
The Well had a house in the middle of a turnover process – the previous tenants had vacated, and its team was working to clean and refresh the house before finding a new tenant. So the agency stepped in to provide emergency housing for Robinson’s family.
The Well’s rehab team was pulled from other jobs and focused on preparing the house as quickly as possible. While Robinson’s family waited for the house to be move-in ready, The Well’s executive director, Zac Kohl, offered to let them stay in one of The Well’s apartments.
“It’s like they picked my whole family up, put them in their arms and were just like, ‘We got you guys,’” said Robinson. “I was just blown away by the work that they did and how fast they did it. It’s a beautiful home.”
The Well was already connected to Robinson in two ways: The Well is invested in Mason Community Learning Center, a school some of her children have attended, and Robinson was a participant in The Well’s workforce development cohort.
“I think it’s a picture of our holistic approach” that is part of an intentional set of services the agency provides to support community improvement in the area, Kohl said.
Funding the initiatives
The Well received $8 million in July 2023. Of that, $2.75 million came from the City of Akron’s American Rescue Plan Act funds, and $1.25 million from a combination of Community Development Block Grant, HOME and lead abatement funds. The Knight Foundation matched the city’s contribution with an additional $4 million. The Well is using the funds to continue restoring homes in the Middlebury neighborhood.
Kyle Kutuchief, the Knight Foundation’s Akron program director, said the foundation was excited about providing support because The Well is addressing one of the fundamental challenges for people and families in Greater Akron.
“The housing program was of particular interest because it is sort of the engine – the revenue engine – that meets the needs of the residents, helps to strengthen the neighborhood itself, but also builds that community development support capability that then provides all the other things too,” Kutuchief said.
As a lifelong resident of Greater Akron, Kutuchief has seen the Middlebury neighborhood struggle with the challenges of disinvestment and predatory landlords, but he said The Well’s impact is impressive.
“To have close to 100 homes in their rental portfolio – that’s pretty amazing,” Kutuchief said. He went on to explain that at the rate The Well’s team is restoring homes, the agency may manage 10% to 15% of the Middlebury market within the next three to five years, given the neighborhood has somewhere around 2,300 homes.
Building The Well
The Well was created in 2016, a few years after Kohl bought his own home in Middlebury and saw the “chaos of the housing market firsthand.” Kohl grew up going to church in the building that eventually became the CDC’s home on East Market Street, and he did some ministry work in Middlebury as a college student.
He then helped found the Neighborhood Network, where the housing market was a recurring topic of conversation.
The approximately 5,400 residents in Middlebury made a median household income of $30,288 in 2021, and the average value of a house was $43,106, compared to $228,772 in the state of Ohio.
“We heard the same conversation all the time – lack of access to jobs, lack of opportunity in housing, a very depressed housing market,” Kohl said. “What we heard all the time was how do we bring investment into the community in a way that matters for the community? And so that was a driving point of why The Well.”
In 2018, The Well’s “Restoring Housing” program launched its “60 for 60” campaign to restore 60 homes in 60 months, a feat that Kohl was excited for, although he initially thought it was naive. Ultimately, The Well restored 84 homes in the initial 60 months, financed by a combination of philanthropic funding, city funding and bank financing.
Now, in month 72 of the program, The Well has restored 95 homes and its board has approved a strategic plan to continue acquiring houses they can restore over the next 10 years.
“I think it just goes to show our community was just as excited about the acquisition rehab model as we were,” Kohl said.
Fostering connections with tenants
Each home takes between four and six months to renovate. The Well’s team does everything from building new walls to repainting the siding, depending on the needs of the property. Kohl’s goal is to make sure the renovations go beyond the bare minimum to make the house habitable and instead create quality places to live.
Rehabbing properties into quality homes goes further than a coat of paint, Kohl said. It includes features such as installing an in-unit washer and dryer or a first-floor bathroom, which would allow tenants to host guests.
The Well has a waitlist of more than 100 families looking for housing, so they try to place people as soon as the agency is given a certificate of occupancy for a property. Sometimes, although not too often, tenants move in the same day.
The Well restores a range of properties from one-bedroom apartments to seven-bedroom houses and works with prospective tenants to decide whether renting or buying a property is the best choice for their circumstances.
“Our houses are for sale to the right people at the right time,” Kohl said. One of the agency’s priorities is to help tenants reach a point where ownership is a realistic possibility.
For example, The Well tries to make sure a tenant does not have to spend more than 33% of their annual income on rent.
The goal is to help their clients build what Kohl calls “mature tenancy” as quickly as possible so they can choose their own path, whether that is a long-term rental or eventually buying a house.
“As you work with families who have only ever rented, how do you know if someone’s actually ready to own?” Kohl said. “So start with rentals. We talk about mature tenancy … where you’re paying your rent on time, you’re paying utilities on time, because that’s probably the biggest indicator of being able to pay a mortgage on time.”
In three years of working with The Well’s tenants, Property Manager Joyce Fox said she’s learned that “trust is a two-way street. And tenants haven’t always felt heard or acknowledged.” She focuses on making sure they feel comfortable approaching her when there’s an issue.
Some come from traumatic situations where they have been threatened with eviction, she explained, so they don’t feel comfortable advocating for themselves.
“So I’m saying, ‘Please, please tell me when there’s a leak. Please tell me when this is broken. Please tell me because we want to fix it,’” Fox said. “But if the experience has been ‘when I advocate for my family, my rent goes up or I’m threatened with eviction, I don’t believe you.’”
Fox’s technique for creating “mature tenancy” is helping tenants make a plan for how they’ll stay on track with important payments when unforeseen circumstances arise. For example, she explained that if a tenant’s tires need to be replaced unexpectedly mid-December, it may be difficult for them to also pay their rent on Jan. 1, especially with holiday expenses.
“And I need people to understand, I want the tenants to understand, that we all struggle like that. Yeah, I think sometimes when you are disadvantaged and struggling, you really feel like it’s just nobody can understand that,” Fox said. “In some cases, landlords won’t give the breaks they themselves receive. And that’s tough. That’s really tough.”
Investing in the neighborhood
Outside of housing initiatives, The Well focuses on “creating economy” and “supporting place” by connecting its clients back to their community. The Knight Foundation’s Kutuchief said The Well’s initiatives are connected to each other in a way that creates a life cycle of community improvement.
“They’ve been very thoughtful about how each of these pieces kind of fits into the daily life of a resident,” Kutuchief said.
For example, The Well’s annual “Middlebury Block Challenge” allows groups of neighbors to apply for a $1,000 microgant. Past awards went to projects such as staining the front porches on the block, community gardens, yard sales and picnics.
Through Akron Food Works, The Well helps local food entrepreneurs expand their businesses and move into the retail space and the local economy, in the process creating less reliance on national chains, Kohl said.
The Well also collaborates with Summa Health to create more jobs for Middlebury residents. This month, The Well and Summa will launch the first pilot cohort of “Direct Connect,” a program that will guarantee participants receive a job offer from Summa after completion.
“The thing I get most excited about at The Well is the holistic approach,” Kohl said. “It’s not just housing. It’s not just workforce. It’s not just placemaking, but it’s how all those different things fit together in the ecosystem of our little one square mile.”
