Community Home TrustCelebrating Our 2026 Building Better Futures Award Winner: Ron Strom
Celebrating Our 2026 Building Better Futures Award Winner: Ron Strom
Community Home Trust is proud to honor Ron Strom with the 2026 Building Better Futures Award, recognizing an individual supporter who shares our belief that everyone deserves a place to call home, and who has gone above and beyond to help make that belief a reality.
For Ron, that commitment is deeply personal. After earning a master’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1980, he and his wife made Chapel Hill home, raising their three children here and now enjoying the community alongside their children and two young granddaughters.
His career in real estate development and investment has been closely intertwined with a longstanding commitment to the community. Through local nonprofits, Boards, and community projects, he has seen firsthand how relationships and collaboration can create lasting change.
His connection to Community Home Trust began through a family-sponsored Habitat home and grew through his friendship with CHT leader Robert Dowling and his involvement as an investor in South Grove, a development that created six CHT homes.
Today, what resonates most with him is CHT’s commitment to mixed-income communities. When affordable homes are integrated alongside market-rate homes, he says, families can build connections across economic differences, reducing stigma and creating stronger neighborhoods.
He also believes deeply in the transformative power of homeownership.
“A home is both a ‘nest’ and a ‘nest egg,’” he says, providing stability, security, opportunity, and a pathway to building wealth.
Ron recognizes that Chapel Hill still has much work to do to make homeownership accessible to more families. He believes that responsibility belongs to all of us, residents, developers, nonprofits, and local governments alike.
“Mixed income communities enrich us all,” he says. “Let us work toward refining the model; we all share in that responsibility.”
We are grateful to Ron for sharing that responsibility with Community Home Trust and for his many years of helping build a stronger, more inclusive Chapel Hill.
Congratulations, Ron Strom, on this well-deserved honor!
This year’s Building Better Futures Award is presented by PNC. Ron and the other Community Impact Awards winners will receive their awards on October 8, 2026, at the Foundation of Home Awards dinner.
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