A place to call home

When Erin Wicker unlocked the door to her new townhome on January 31, 2025, it wasn’t just a closing day. It was a fresh start.

A single mom of two, Erin had spent the previous few years rebuilding her life. After 16 years of marriage, the pandemic brought profound instability to her family. Erin lost her art business. She changed careers. She and her husband divorced. Her income dropped dramatically. She sold her home.

And suddenly, after years of being middle-class, she found herself unable to qualify for an apartment.

“I do believe the program changed my life,” Erin says. “When I was trying to rent because my income was so low, I couldn’t get approved anywhere. I had been paying my mortgage by myself all year. I even had a nest egg. It didn’t matter. No one would approve me.”

For six months, she searched. No answers. No callbacks. Just online income filters and closed doors.

She and her children ended up in an unsafe neighborhood where Erin frequently called 911. Her kids couldn’t play outside. It was frightening. It was destabilizing.

Then a coworker told her about the Atlanta Land Trust, which uses the community land trust model to sell homes affordably while keeping land in trust – preventing displacement and ensuring long-term affordability.

Erin attended an introductory meeting in early 2023 and began the extensive process toward home ownership: classes, income verification, documentation, and workshops. The program was thorough and hands-on. When she closed, the builder even walked her through the systems in her new home.

Today, Erin is a proud homeowner at The Trust at East Lake Townhomes — in a 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath home. She pulls a wagon to Publix behind her home and rolls groceries straight into her kitchen. Her neighbors text her if a package arrives. Her children can play outside again.

Her daughter calls her pink, bunk-bed-filled bedroom her “dream room.” Her son is decorating his own space for the first time. Erin calls the entire top floor — where she has space to create art again — her “Rapunzel room.”

“Being able to buy a home that was not based on my income but instead on my debt-to-income ratio was incredible,” she says.

The Atlanta Land Trust, a grantee of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, made this stability possible, creating affordable homeownership opportunities that keep families rooted in their communities.

For Erin, it’s more than housing.

It’s safety.
It’s dignity.
It’s stability for her children.
It’s the ability to build again.

And that changes everything.