For more than 25 years, Keith Walker has been working to reinvent the standard of affordable housing in North Carolina.
 
Keith Walker– founder, president and CEO of East Carolina Community Development Inc. (ECCDI) – has called Eastern North Carolina home since 1985 when he began a career in human services.
 
Now as the principal officer of ECCDI, he develops workforce real estate across the region, including Wilmington’s Cypress Cove near the Creekwood neighborhood.
 
Coming from cold winters of Buffalo, New York, he started as a counselor at a small facility for at-risk youth in Newport, North Carolina. Seven years later, he became the Community Services Block Grant director at Carteret Community Action, where he managed grant utilization of the federal funds designated for lowincome persons in Beaufort and the surrounding areas.
 
“Part of that was looking at community housing,” Walker explained. “In the late ’90s, housing in rural areas was deplorable. We were spending hundreds of dollars putting people up in substandard housing.”
 
After successfully securing funding for a development deal in Morehead City, Walker felt called to move forward with project development.
 
“I was not just funding community action,” Walker said. “I was actually going out and working with people who were repairing ceilings and floors and commodes. It was relationship-building.”
 
Walker saw a need, and in 1995, ECCDI incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to create opportunities for residents to live in healthy, affordable homes, improve their lives and enhance their economic status.
 
“We provide quality, affordable housing,” Walker said, “but we’re not providing public housing. Our residents pay the rent themselves … and our goal is to get them in affordable housing in areas in the east (part of the state) where land is not plentiful and is very, very expensive.”
 
ECCDI began building in the Beaufort area, still Walker’s home base, stretching into Newport and Morehead City, then Jacksonville and now Wilmington. The local workforce housing development Cypress Cove holds 200 one-, twoand three-bedroom units.
 
One year after its launch in late 2018, the Cypress Cove community is fully leased. Residents are screened for minimum income levels and criminal records and must maintain a good-neighbor status. ECCDI builds communities, not just housing, Walker said.
 
“There’s a need for approximately 2,000 units of affordable housing in Wilmington,” he said. “You can build for the next 10 years and not keep up with one of the fastest-growing counties in the state … You have to have space not just for very poor and very rich housing, but also for workforce community building.”
 
Walker explained how the landscape – physically and financially – differs from when ECCDI started 25 years ago. For example, today more people working in the city are forced to buy housing in more rural areas.
 
“Way back then, it was hard to find people to use the tax credit program,” he said. “You could almost give them away back then. It was still competitive but not as competitive as today.”
 
Along with its partners, the Wilmington Housing Authority and the city of Wilmington, ECCDI secured competitive federal tax credits and bonds to receive more than $30 million in funding for Cypress Cove. But with so little buildable land available, it also took time to find a lot for development.
 
“Keith Walker is a visionary,” said Robert Campbell, ECCDI board chairman and senior pastor at New Beginning Christian Church in Castle Hayne. “The way he found the land to build behind Creekwood … Most of us drive by that land every day and don’t see the point. He is just what we need.”
 
Campbell connected with Walker, who was looking for a Wilmington-based board member, when plans for Cypress Cove first began more than five years ago.
 
“He doesn’t build cheap housing,” Campbell emphasized. “He’s building good housing that’s affordable … We’re lucky he’s looking into our area and knows how to use the tax credits and to help people in need.”
 
Since its inception, ECCDI has built 16 developments in Eastern North Carolina, housing more than 1,300 individuals among 935 units, including special needs and veterans housing.
 
Walker has also raised more than $70 million for affordable housing and has overseen more than $13 million in loan programs.
 
This year, he’s working with Campbell and New Beginning Christian Church to secure plans for their next development project – a 68-unit pinwheel-design senior living facility in Castle Hayne.
 
Walker is encouraged by the support of New Hanover Countyarea agencies and looks forward to future development in the Wilmington area.
 
“If you look at it from a financial standpoint and where people are putting their dollars,” he said, “you see that ECCDI put millions of dollars in the Creekwood area. The town’s put money into it … I see that as a positive change."