Winston-Salem’s housing authority is going through changes.

In the last couple of months, HAWS — the city’s housing authority — has welcomed two new board members, moved their headquarters to the King building on Cleveland Avenue, is working on building new public housing with a Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant and has plans to rebrand the organization, which was discussed by HAWS’s board of commissioners during Tuesday’s monthly board meeting.

HAWS is one of many agencies that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development funds so they can provide housing to low-income residents.

HAWS’s executive director Kevin Cheshire explained during Tuesday’s meeting that in April they anticipate the grand opening of the King building — which is currently being revamped — would “coincide with the rebranding.” In an email to TCB, Cheshire declined to share why the organization is rebranding, instead stating that the organization is “hoping to roll this out as part of a coordinated strategy tied to the grand opening of our building.” He added that he preferred “the specifics not be in the public domain until that time.”

Cheshire also said that they are not “in a position to either confirm or deny a new name or otherwise address the scope of the rebranding effort.”

However, elevator decals with the word “ASPIRE” could be spotted in the King building at 901 Cleveland Ave.

Additionally, local writer and activist C.P. Tew wrote in a Winston Watchman piece published on Wednesday that a HAWS staffer confirmed to him on Tuesday that the organization would “soon be renamed ASPIRE.”

HAWS manages 10 public housing buildings with more than one thousand units altogether, including Healy Towers, Sunrise Towers and Piedmont Park, as well as Crystal Towers — a downtown high rise built in the 1970s specifically for the elderly. It still serves this population to this day, as well as people with disabilities. However, after years of deteriorating conditions at the building such as broken-down elevators and leaky laundry facilities, as well as bedbugs, rodents and other pests, HAWS nearly sold Crystal Towers in 2020. However, after pushback from the building’s community and local activists, HAWS decided to renovate the deteriorating building instead. After more than a year of work, both elevators have been replaced.

What else is going on with HAWS?

With rising rents, HAWS is pinching the purse strings of their Section 8 program, limiting the number of housing vouchers they are able to distribute. Vouchers offset housing costs for low-income, elderly and disabled residents, allowing them to put only a certain percentage of their income toward rent. HAWS’s voucher waiting list was open for two days in April 2024 after being closed for more than two years.

Last year, HUD footed the bill when HAWS was over budget, Cheshire said, but this year HUD doesn’t anticipate being able to step in.

“We have to carefully track the vouchers that we have leased up, because if we overspend this year, we’re going to have to find that money somewhere else,” he said during Tuesday’s meeting.

All CityBeat reporting content is made possible by a grant from the NC Local News Lab Fund, available to republish for free by any news outlet who cares to use it. Learn More ↗

Republish this story 🞬

Republishing Content

All content created for the CityBeat— photos, illustrations and text — is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 license (CCA-ND).

These republishing rules DO NOT apply to all of our content. The CityBeat is a nonprofit-funded position that specifically reports on city council business in Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

You are free to republish all content from the CityBeat under the following conditions:

  • Please copy and paste an html tracking code into articles you post online, allowing us to access analytics on our work.
    It can be dropped onto the page right beneath the copyable content, available below.

    If your site is using Google Analytics already:

    <script>
    gtag('config', 'UA-49884744-1');
    gtag('event', 'page_view', {
        page_title: 'Amid financial strain, the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem looks to rebrand',
        page_location: 'https://triad-city-beat.com/housing-authority-winston-salem-to-rebrand/',
        send_to: 'UA-49884744-1'
    });
</script>

    If your site is not using Google Analytics: 

    <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-49884744-1"></script>
<script>
    window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
    function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
    gtag('js', new Date());
    gtag('config', 'UA-49884744-1');
    gtag('event', 'page_view', {
        page_title: 'Amid financial strain, the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem looks to rebrand',
        page_location: 'https://triad-city-beat.com/housing-authority-winston-salem-to-rebrand/',
        send_to: 'UA-49884744-1'
    });
</script>

  • Please use our bylines with attribution to Triad City Beat with a live link to our website: "by Gale Melcher/Triad City Beat"
  • At the bottom of the article (print or web) please include this text (links may be hyperlinked online):

    "Triad City Beat is an independent, for-profit news source serving the cities of the NC Piedmont Triad in Guilford and Forsyth counties, online at triad-city-beat.com.
    CityBeat content is funded by a grant from the NC Local News Lab Fund, online at nclocalnews.org."

  • If you have any questions, please contact Brian Clarey at [email protected]

Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.

We believe that reporting can save the world.

The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.

All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.

⚡ Join The Society ⚡