One of Cary’s only affordable neighborhoods for working-class families is now empty of residents.
Ahead of the June 30 move-out deadline, 144 households—roughly 700 people—vacated Chatham Estates mobile home park.The property’s owner, Curtis Westbrook, who set the deadline back in December, plans to sell the downtown-adjacent property to Toll Brothers, a construction company, for $30 million.
When Westbrook announced his intent to sell in 2023, residents wondered where they would go. At Chatham Estates, they paid about $400 a month to rent the land beneath their mobile homes. But the median rent in Cary is more than five times that at $2,200. The median home price is $630,000.
Neighbors formed the Chatham Estates Neighborhood Association and lobbied the town of Cary and Toll Brothers to help relieve some of the burden of their impending displacement. Requests to the developer to contribute to their relocation fund fell on deaf ears, but the town agreed to set aside $800,000 for one-time housing assistance.
Cary tapped local nonprofit NeighborUp to administer that fund, which it called Stable Homes Cary. NeighborUp told the INDY this week that more than 120 of the 144 households signed up for the program. NeighborUp raised an additional $113,000 in philanthropic donations for Chatham Estates residents.
According to NeighborUp, 80% of the families it assisted are staying in Wake County. Over 40% are staying in Cary. About 20% achieved homeownership, either purchasing a home or a mobile home. Some senior residents moved into the affordable senior housing at Rose Park Manor.
“Everyone is housed,” said Shelley Hobbs, NeighborUp’s vice president of communication and strategy. Most families have moved into their new housing, whether that’s a home, apartment, new mobile home, or the same mobile home in a new location. A few, Hobbs said, are still waiting for a lease to begin or a sale to close but have found temporary housing in the meantime.
Those top-line statistics are reassuring, but they undersell what a wrenching and stressful six months it’s been for residents of Chatham Estates, said Katia Roebuck, an organizer with the N.C. Congress of Latino Organizations. Roebuck helped residents advocate for themselves to the town and the new buyers and supported many families as they searched for new housing. She compared the uncertainty and fear of being uprooted to “having no feet and hands.”
“It goes beyond just being displaced,” she said. “You lose your neighbors, your connections, your friends.” Many parents had to move their kids to a new school, she said. Some people had to find new jobs after they moved far away from their old ones.
Roebuck credits Chatham Estates residents with pressuring the town to approve Stable Homes Cary and spreading awareness about their neighborhood’s situation to the wider Cary community.
“This was accomplished because [residents] decided to organize persistently and consistently,” she said. “This is money they won through three years of work.”
By the time everyone is permanently housed, NeighborUp will have spent all of the Stable Homes Cary money and all of the donated funds, Hobbs said. Assistance was distributed based on household size and income.
NeighborUp partnered with organizations and churches including A Doorway to Hope, the Green Chair Project, St. Michael’s Church, Genesis United Methodist Church, and the local YMCA to conduct outreach and deliver assistance, Hobbs said.
“The concept of serving people and relocating is not new to us … but moving an entire community is definitely new,” Hobbs said. “This is the first time that we’ve ever had an opportunity like this, and I don’t think it will be the last, as the area continues to grow.”
In 2025, NeighborUp served over 11,000 people in southern and western Wake County across its financial and food assistance, thrift shop, and workforce development functions, Hobbs said.
“In Wake County … the number of people that are barely getting by, if they’re getting by, is probably a lot higher than I think people would guess,” she said.
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