A North Philly guy known for fixing neighbors’ homes finally gets to renovate his own

Dwayne Fair has to be careful about sitting on the steps outside his North Philadelphia house.

Someone is likely to walk by and ask him for help fixing something around their home. But he loves it.

“I don’t mind helping nobody,” said Fair, 60, building manager for the union hall of Philadelphia’s largest city worker union and godsend to neighbors. “I’m thankful to be able to do what I do.”

Fair has spent two decades fixing and renovating other people’s homes, from projects for neighbors and family members to work for rental property owners. There’s no shortage of jobs.

The city’s housing stock is old, and completing all the home repairs needed across the Philadelphia metropolitan area would cost billions of dollars. Many residents can’t afford repairs, and assistance programs can’t meet the high demand.

For a long time, despite being a go-to person for home repairs, Fair couldn’t renovate his own house — his family’s home of more than 50 years and a neighborhood gathering spot — because his family rented the home from the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

Now, thanks to help from a couple of PHA programs, Fair owns the house, fulfilling a promise he made to his mom before she died. And he’s been renovating it like he’d always wanted to for her.

“I couldn’t invest in it when someone could come and tell you to leave at any moment,” he said. “I wish she could see it now. Oh, I wish she could see it now.”

Fair moved and expanded the kitchen, opening up the first floor. He installed recessed lighting, a new stair railing, and hardwood floors. He renovated the half bathroom. Next, he plans to finish the basement, where the passionate fisher keeps his equipment, and replace the floors upstairs.

“His property has appreciated in value because of the investments he’s put in it,” said Kelvin Jeremiah, PHA’s president and chief executive officer. “And that appreciation is his. It’s not PHA’s.”

Fair bought his house, where he lives with his oldest brother, in 2021 through PHA programs that helped him grow his savings, improve his credit score, and cover the down payment.

His story is not common. In the 11 years since PHA started its home ownership program, Fair is one of about 700 PHA renters and housing voucher holders who have purchased homes through it. And of those who do, many buy other properties instead of the ones they rented.

Barbara Walker, a friend of Fair’s mother who became family, has lived in the neighborhood for decades. One day, a newer neighbor told her that a Fair family member had rung the doorbell and handed over a plate of food.

“I said, ‘That’s what they do,’” said Walker, 80.

Fair’s mother, Cattie, used to send her children to neighbors’ houses with meals. The block captain also watched children whose mothers dropped them off on the way to work. “She practically raised our neighborhood,” Fair said.

The Fairs’ door was never locked, and anyone and everyone was welcome in the home.

“It was always referred to as the family house,” Walker said. “But the unique thing about the house is it’s not just one family’s house.”

Even though Fair has switched out the front door, and many longtime neighbors have died or moved away, the house is still welcoming. It’s where the grandfather of nine pulls out the grill to cook for block parties. And it remains his family’s home base. Fair is one of eight siblings, and they all have keys to the house.

“The Fair family is one of the best examples of family that I have had in my life,” Walker said, “and I come from a close-knit family.”

Since becoming a homeowner, Fair has preached the benefits and encouraged others to find ways to buy a home. His brother and sister-in-law closed on their first house this spring, and Bernadette Fair, 56, said he has been teaching her all about her home.

“He’s my go-to guy for everything,” she said, from repairs to guidance if the work is something the new homeowners can do themselves. “If he can help you, he will.”

Dionne Cerdan works with a lot of first-time homebuyers as director of housing for the Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia-based housing-counseling agency. And she sees that with first-time buyers, “they’re so excited about what they were able to accomplish that they talk it up.”

She sees that clients want to build generational wealth and make sure their children and grandchildren have a place to come back to, so they can tell them, “no matter what happens in life, you can always land on this porch if you need to,” Cerdan said. “Purchasing a home not just for a right-now moment but for a perpetual moment.”

» READ MORE: PHA renters can divert rent increases to a savings account to buy a house. But few do.

Jeremiah at PHA said he wants more of the housing authority’s renters to follow Fair’s lead and take advantage of the housing authority’s home ownership program and the opportunities that come with owning.

“We have thousands of families who are living in assisted housing all their lives and dying and not being able to leave anything, and I really do mean anything, for their children and their grandchildren,” Jeremiah said.

Now that Fair is a homeowner, he’s working to buy some investment properties.

Working with a local investor is how he got his start renovating properties about 20 years ago. He credits a string of people working in construction and property investment who showed him he could make it in the industries.

One of those people was Joe Leak, who said that, fittingly, he thinks plumbing was one of the first trades Fair learned from him. The two met in a pool league.

» READ MORE: Why are Philly’s construction unions so white?

“He found out what I did, and he’s always been interested in learning. He’s like a sponge,” said Leak, who maintains properties for a Philadelphia property management company and has worked in construction trades for 45 years. “Since he had the propensity to learn and do, I took him on some jobs with me and taught him some of the basic ropes of construction.”

“He’s just generally a very nice guy,” said Leak, 74. “He’s the kind of guy you want everybody you meet to be like.”

Carole Harper said that sometimes when she calls Fair, she’ll half-joke and ask, “‘Whose drain are you under now?’ and he’ll laugh ‘cause he’s always doing something for somebody.”

Harper has known Fair for most of his life. She was his first-grade teacher at the neighborhood’s Rudolph Walton Elementary School, long closed. Like his mother, whom Harper worked with, he’s always smiling and goes the extra mile to help people, Harper said. Neighbors even stop him as he’s driving down the street, she said.

“Just by his actions, by his demeanor, by the way he carries himself, it makes you want to be better,” Harper said.

At her Germantown home, Fair has painted, installed a hot water heater and a new toilet, and helped install her kitchen. After a storm sent several feet of water into her house in Atlantic City, buckling her floors and ruining her walls, Fair stepped in.

“He put the house back together,” Harper said. “If you could see the before and after pictures, you wouldn’t believe it.”

» READ MORE: 6 programs that can help you repair your home for free or at a low cost

Walker, Fair’s neighbor turned family, said she told Fair, “’Sometimes I feel guilty asking you to do things, because so many people have dibs on you.’ He said, ‘That don’t even matter.’”

She recalled a time when Fair replaced her utility sink’s faucet. Only one place had the part he needed, so he drove 45 minutes to get it.

“There’s nobody on this block, I believe, who hasn’t gotten some kind of assistance from Wayne in some way,” she said, using the name everyone calls him.

Walker said she’s just recently gotten him to take payment. She told him, “You may not want to charge people for the work you do, but accept it.”

“He’s a rare breed,” she said, “and a wonderful soul.”