Greg Jarrell: Advocating for Housing Equity Through Words and Music
By Loán C. Lake
Life changed for Charlotte community organizer Greg Jarrell the day he realized there were two Americas. This hard truth unfolded during his college years when he lived and worked in East St. Louis, Illinois at the urging of his mentor at Appalachian State University. Jarrell, who co-founded the Charlotte-based nonprofit QC Family Tree with his wife Jessica “Helms,” grew up in a small tobacco town outside of Raleigh.
“I was raised in a conservative, very white world, and East St. Louis was the very opposite of the world I grew up in,” he said. “It was shocking that a place that had been so over-extracted, exploited and quite frankly, looked so bombed-out, could exist in the United States, and yet, people were so remarkably hospitable towards me — a white guy occupying their space. I wanted to understand how their conditions came to be and why they were so welcoming towards me.”
This dichotomy of American life forced Jarrell to re-examine what he believed to be true about America and led the App State music major turned theologian to attend seminary in Richmond, Virginia. It also shaped his work as a community organizer and advocate. His world no longer made sense to him because he could not reconcile the impoverished setting he witnessed in Illinois with the American dream that he had been fed for so long.
“We sought to unlearn racial biases by living in a diverse neighborhood and joining a Black church because my experiences revealed that I had not learned to see the world truthfully. That is the cost of whiteness — not being able to see the world truthfully,” Jarrell said.
In 2005, the Jarrells relocated to Charlotte’s Enderly Park neighborhood on Tuckasegee Road with the intention of immersing themselves in the heart of the Black community.
To address the disparities he saw, Jarrell and his wife launched their faith-based nonprofit, QC Family Tree, he said, to “inspire, enrich and embody community” in their ministry and common life. The organization also empowers residents and combats the effects of systemic racism and gentrification.
For the past 20 years, Jarrell said he and his team have provided a safe space for residents and advocates for resources to improve the quality of life for his neighbors. His work initially consisted of providing residents with meals and housing support, and now focuses more on organizing grassroots coalitions to influence housing policy and neighborhood development in the face of rapid gentrification.
Jarrell also blends his love of writing and music to impact housing and neighborhood justice issues. He is a co-leader of the jazz band Carolina Social Music Club and has authored two books — “Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods,” published in 2024, which examines the role that First Baptist Church played in displacing the residents of Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood during Urban Renewal, and “A Riff of Love: Notes on Community and Belonging,” published in 2018, which pays tribute to the culture of Enderly Park and the people who make up the QC Family Tree community.
“Our Trespasses” began as a research project following the conversations he had while on bicycle tours of the former Brooklyn neighborhood. Given his candor on issues of gentrification and housing inequality, Jarrell said he has faced opposition from his white counterparts for his views, including having his work ignored. He remains unphased, however, and is more committed than ever to educating white residents who justify the effects of racial discrimination by highlighting the modern amenities they now enjoy in Charlotte, he said.
“I try to enrich people’s imaginations, to make them dissatisfied with nice, white Charlotte, and the genteel nature of our city,” he said. “In other words, how do we become really dissatisfied so that we can become part of a solution that works for all of our neighbors?”
Jarrell said his strategy for writing “Our Trespasses”was not to write an overview of Urban Renewal policy, but to tell the most detailed and particular story possible by placing extensive focus on one corner of Charlotte during that period, in hopes of gaining a better understanding of what was happening across the United States.
“I wanted to be able to show the evolution of one particular corner over the course of 150 years and how the changes in the geography had long term cultural and material effects on all the people who had lived or worked on that corner,” he said. “Through sermons, hymns and stories being told in the church newsletter, I tried to learn, as intimately as I could, about the lives of the Black families who had lived there and how this course of history had affected them and their descendants.”
Jarrell said he remains optimistic that he will impact the right people at the right time and plans to continue speaking, teaching, and preaching on place, race and faith.