Community Home TrustCelebrating Tiz G., 2026 Deanna Carson Memorial Good Neighbor Award Recipient
Celebrating Tiz G., 2026 Deanna Carson Memorial Good Neighbor Award Recipient
Community Home Trust is proud to honor Tiz G. with the 2026 Deanna Carson Memorial Good Neighbor Award, recognizing their commitment to community, housing justice, and the practice of being a good neighbor.
Tiz is honored to be included in Ms. Deanna Carson’s enduring legacy. Tiz started on their pathway to homeownership with Community Home Trust in 2016, and worked alongside Ms. Deanna throughout that journey. They remember with gratitude Ms. Deanna’s kindness, care for community, and honesty around the tensions and history surrounding homeownership in historically Black neighborhoods (like Northside) here in Orange County.
Having survived many years of homelessness in their late teens and 20s, Tiz does not take for granted what stable housing has afforded them. They are a firm believer that people who attain stability are given more opportunities to create stability for others.
Through their work with the Community Empowerment Fund, Tiz has helped first-time and first-generation homebuyers to navigate financial systems in an effort to address our community’s racial wealth gap. And though CEF’s Homebuyer’s Program is currently paused, spending the last 2.5 years walking alongside other community members as they attained their homeownership dream has been Tiz’s honor. But CEF’s work is rooted in the belief that lasting change requires more than individual effort. Ending the racial wealth gap requires confronting structural barriers created by redlining, discriminatory lending, and other forms of exclusion.
Tiz also recognizes that they are part of a much larger movement and that they are building on the leadership and wisdom of those who came before them. And of those who are still here, fighting to uplift and preserve a community continually at risk of displacement and land-loss.
Their approach has been shaped by following the leadership of local Black-led community organizations fighting for housing justice, supporting people at 30% AMI and below, preserving historically Black neighborhoods, and creating opportunities for first-generation homeowners to build generational wealth. The work of organizations like the EmPOWERment Inc, Marion Cheek Jackson Center, Pee Wee Homes, and the Community Empowerment Fund prove that housing justice is also about building power, relationships, and conditions that nourish communities and allow them to thrive. Tiz tries to continually learn from that work, and to respectfully carry those teachings forward.
Their story reminds us that when we have the opportunity to find stability, it can be a foundation from which we show up for our neighbors, strengthen our communities, and continue the work of those who came before us in the fight for justice and equity. In that way, they hope to embody the legacy of good neighborliness championed by Ms. Deanna Carson: care, accountability, and responsibility to one another.
Tiz 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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