Video: Builders of Hope and Wesley Rankin partner for West Dallas home preservation
A common mission to give West Dallas residents the ability to stay in their homes brought Builders of Hope and Wesley Rankin Community Center together in 2018.
As both organizations have worked on policies and practices to empower neighbors in Los Altos and the rest of West Dallas to stay in their homes, they have learned two important things:
There are no quick and easy fixes to prevent the displacement of longtime, working class residents who live in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. Helping people stay in their homes and hold onto generational wealth is a long process.
And such a process means that trust, rather than legal or financial expertise, is the key to success.
Wesley-Rankin, rooted in West Dallas’ Los Altos community for more than 100 years, has earned that trust. That’s why Builders of Hope partnered with the organization to create a Homestead Preservation Center, combining its policy expertise with Wesley-Rankin’s deep relationships.
“We see it as an anti-displacement tool, but it’s also just a home preservation tool,” says Stephanie Champion Martinez, chief community development and policy officer at Builders of Hope.
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Prior to joining the Dallas Free Press as a visual journalist, Camilo Diaz Jr. was a video intern at KERA, the NPR and PBS member station for North Texas, where he developed a deep appreciation for video production. He also worked as a multimedia fellow at the Fort Worth Report, covering local news in his hometown. As a teenager, he began documenting his community and identity through photography, leading him to the world of photojournalism. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from the University of North Texas.
Beat: Visual and multimedia approach to capturing community and civic life
The images of our communities that appear in local news media are mostly of crime and blight, which doesn’t at all reflect their beauty and assets. This visual journalist sees neighbors and captures community and civic life in all of its facets. The journalist is a multimedia reporter with a photographic eye, who has the skills to meld images, video and audio for storytelling, and the desire to reach under-covered audiences.
