Preserving a Home. Preserving a Community.

For 80 years, Ms. BJ Caldwell has watched Pottstown change. She remembers when the historic Huntersville community was filled with families who knew one another, shared meals together, and built their lives on land they had worked to make their own. She remembers the midwives who welcomed generations of children into the world, including her own great-grandmother. She remembers the people whose names and stories have become part of the history she has spent much of her life working to preserve. Today, only about 35 residents remain.

Ms. Caldwell worries about what happens when the people who remember a community are gone. She has written several books about Pottstown and its families because she believes those stories deserve to survive. But to her, preserving Pottstown has never been only about documenting the past. It is about making sure there is still a community here to carry those stories into the future. As she puts it, “Gentrification is worse than individual death because it’s the death of a whole community.” She wants people to know that Pottstown is still here and that the people who live there are real people with real stories and a real history.

Her own home is part of that history. Ms. Caldwell purchased the house from a neighbor, Mr. Grant, whose family she had helped care for. The house had been condemned, but with guidance from her cousin and help from local subcontractors and neighbors, she rebuilt it from the frame. In 1993, she moved in. More than three decades later, it remains her home.

Over the years, though, maintaining the house became increasingly difficult. Many of the neighbors and local tradespeople who once helped care for homes throughout Pottstown have passed away or been forced out. Small maintenance needs can become major problems when there is no longer someone nearby who can help. A gutter that needs cleaning, peeling paint, damaged trim, missing insulation, or a handrail that needs to be built can all become barriers to keeping a home safe and in good condition.

This fall, Rebuilding Together of Greater Charlotte was able to come alongside Ms. Caldwell and help care for the home she has worked so hard to preserve. Our volunteers cleaned the gutters, trimmed trees, and cleared the yard. They repaired areas of exterior trim and wood rot, replaced the lattice on the rear porch, pressure washed the house, and addressed peeling exterior paint. They also installed new house numbers and refinished her picnic table, helping restore some of the small details that make a house feel cared for.

The work continued inside the home as well. Volunteers installed floor joist insulation where it was missing and rescued areas where the insulation had fallen. They cleaned ceiling fan blades and light fixture bulbs, helping with the routine maintenance that can become increasingly difficult to manage. Along the ramp outside her home, they built a new handrail to provide additional support and stability.

None of these repairs tells the whole story on its own. A clean gutter may seem like a small thing. So might a repaired piece of trim, a refinished picnic table, or a new handrail. But together, these projects help address the everyday maintenance that allows a homeowner to remain safely and comfortably in the home they have spent years building a life in. For Ms. Caldwell, caring for the house is also part of caring for the connection she has to Pottstown.

That connection is increasingly important as the community around her changes. Ms. Caldwell has spent her life watching Pottstown's population shrink and its landscape change. She knows that communities can disappear gradually, not necessarily through one dramatic moment, but through homes falling into disrepair, families moving away, longtime residents aging, and stories becoming harder to pass down. When the people who carry those memories are gone, pieces of that history can disappear with them.

That is why housing preservation matters. RTGC believes a home is more than a structure that needs to be repaired. It is where people build routines, raise families, welcome neighbors, celebrate milestones, and hold onto memories.

For Ms. Caldwell, that place is Pottstown. Her home is one of the places where its history is still being lived, not simply remembered. The work our volunteers completed cannot stop the changes happening around the community, and it cannot bring back the neighbors and families who have moved away. But it can help one homeowner remain rooted. It can help protect one historic home from falling into disrepair. And it can give Ms. Caldwell more time to do what she has spent so much of her life doing: telling the story of Pottstown and making sure people know it is still here.

We are grateful to have been invited into that story and to have the opportunity to care for Ms. Caldwell’s home alongside her and her community.