A Philly family bought their first home thanks to reparations from Quakers in Germantown

Michaelle Bond, Philadelphia Inquirer

Green Street Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation in Germantown, pledged to spend $50,000 a year for 10 years as part of its reparations work. It’s helping Black Philadelphians become homeowners.

Charmira and Quincy Pilgrim wanted to become homeowners a decade ago when they got married.

But over the years, job losses, jobs that didn’t pay enough, children, unpaid maternity leave, and rising costs of living made saving for homeownership impossible.

They were finally able to start putting money away late last year. And this spring, they found a $315,000 house they wanted to buy in West Oak Lane. But they were short thousands of dollars for their down payment and closing costs.

What got them and their five children into their new home was a $10,000 first-time homebuyer grant funded by a group of Quakers in Germantown.

“It was a blessing that I ended up getting the grant because money was tight,” said Charmira, a 32-year-old special education teacher and case manager.

Up-front cost is a common barrier to homeownership for renters in Philadelphia and across the country. Grants for down payments and closing costs can help aspiring homeowners get in the door. Governments, mortgage lenders, and nonprofits are common funders.

That’s what makes the Pilgrims’ grant stand out. It’s one of five $10,000 grants that Green Street Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation in Germantown, is funding to help people buy their first homes. It’s part of the congregation’s racial justice plan to redistribute wealth to Black residents in the Germantown area as a form of reparations.

When Green Street announced the homebuyer grants in March, it said it sees reparations as “economic and spiritual repair for the intergenerational harms of slavery, Jim Crow, and their afterlives.” Reparations, it said, are “intended to address the theft and pillaging of Black wealth” for hundreds of years through systemic discrimination.

Keep reading.

Learn more about the period known as Jim Crow.

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