news-record.com

Like kissing babies, slapping backs and eating chicken dinners, donning the clothes and occupation of a Working Joe is a regular part of any politician's life.

U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Charlotte Democrat, did the latter Wednesday, visiting a home construction site in the West End neighborhood in High Point.

"That's how you build muscles and character," Watt said after wielding a nail gun to join the framing of an interior wall to the house's outer wall.

The home was being built by SHARE of North Carolina, a nonprofit that builds houses for low-income families. Two new homes were rising from lots where dilapidated and unoccupied houses had once stood. High Point bought and cleared the land so the builder could move in.

Watt shook hands and greeted a number of people at the site, including T'Yawn Chisem, who plans to move into one of the new houses at the end of September with her two daughters.

SHARE's mission includes not just building houses but also helping homeowners get ready to care for and keep up with their investment.

That's a component that Watt says was missing during a boom in high-risk mortgages earlier this decade, a market that is now having problems as default rates increase.

"What a lot of the lenders missed was that it can't just be about making money on a loan short term," he said. "Financial education, rehabilitation of credit, building community networks around people, providing basic lawn mowers and basic maintenance advice — all of that is necessary for home ownership," Watt said. "And I think the lenders, a lot of them, lost sight of it in the name of making a quick buck."

Watt said that leaders needed to not only make sure that no more bad loans get made, but that credit remained available for those who were trying to move into their first houses.

— Mark Binker