Winston-Salem State University receives grant to launch housing-focused research center

Winston-Salem State University recently received a grant of nearly $4 million that will help the school launch a new research center focused on housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, currently has seven active Centers of Excellence at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-serving institutions throughout the country. WSSU will join these schools in conducting research on challenges faced in underserved communities.

WSSU professor Dan Rose says the new center's focus will be on housing affordability and evictions throughout the state's rural areas.

"We're seeing the affordability crisis that has come to big U.S. cities over the last few decades is now coming to rural places like those we have in North Carolina," he says. "So we're hoping to be able to find out more about the situations that people are living in in rural counties, and be able to make policy recommendations based off of those findings."

Rose says they've received three years of funding, but the hope is to see this become a permanent research center.