Activists and tenants gather near Housing Authority of Winston-Salem headquarters in April to protest conditions in public housing. (Photo: Greg Childress)
Kevin Cheshire, the executive director and general counsel of the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem (HAWS), is stepping down, effective June 30, after five years in the role.
Cheshire said he will remain with the housing authority in an advisory role to maintain continuity while his replacement is “brought up to speed” on the workings of the organization.
“This has been in the works for almost two years, at least a year and a half,” Cheshire said. “My board has known this is the plan and the mayor (Allen Joines) has known this is the plan.”
Cheshire said his pending departure is unrelated to the call from some tenants and local housing activists for his resignation over concerns about his management of the city’s aging public housing high rises. Tenants have complained that Cheshire is inattentive to their concerns and has failed to maintain safe and sanitary housing at several apartment complexes managed by HAWS.
“I had sort of anticipated that the folks who were being the most vocal demanding my resignation had already gotten wind of the fact that my resignation was imminent, and that they were planning strategically to take credit for something they knew was already coming,” Cheshire said. “Whether that’s the case, I still have no idea. But no, it [calls for his resignation] didn’t [play a role] because that decision had already been made.”
In an online post, the group Housing Justice Now, a tenant advocacy group that has been critical of Cheshire’s leadership, celebrated the departure as a victory.
“He has ignored needed public housing renovations while pouring millions into the HAWS office building, underutilized Section 8 vouchers, bungled a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant, pursued retaliatory evictions, and pushed through a meaningless rebrand of the agency,” the group said. “Tenant organizing at Crystal Towers, Healy Towers, Cleveland Avenue, and across our city made it impossible for Cheshire to push through even more bad policies. Make no mistake, this resignation is an organizing victory! And we demand the next executive director be truly dedicated to low-income housing!”
Dan Rose, an activist with Housing Justice Now, said Cheshire has not served Winston-Salem well.
“The fact that Mayor Joines believes he did shows that the problem is not isolated to one public official,” Rose said. “Residents that are directly affected by the housing crisis should be selecting the housing authority’s next leader; not the mayor’s out-of-touch board of commissioners.”
Andrew Perkins, chairman of the HAWS Board of Commissioners, said the board will be “genuinely sorry” to see Chesire step down.
“We have known for over a year that he wanted to transition once he completed some very important initiatives for the Housing Authority,” Perkins said. “Kevin and his team have worked closely with the board and have accomplished everything we asked of them and more.”
Perkins said Cheshire and his team have made great progress in creating more affordable housing. He noted the $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative redevelopment grant Cheshire helped to secure from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – the first to be awarded in North Carolina.
Cheshire joined HAWS in 2013 as vice president of real estate development and general counsel. After a national search following the retirement of former executive director Larry Woods, Cheshire was promoted to the position in January 2020.
“I’ve been here 12 years, and this was never something I intended to do for 20 or 30 years,” Cheshire said. “There were some very specific tasks that the board and I discussed when I first stepped into the role. I was committed to doing everything in my power to completing those tasks and then stepping aside to allow someone else to build on that foundation.”
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