Danny H. Rogers grew up in Daniel Brooks Homes and J.C. Morgan Homes, two public housing communities in High Point, North Carolina. Today, he is the Guilford County Sheriff. The distance between those two facts is not a miracle. It is a map, one that the Housing Authority of the City of High Point (HPHA) has spent more than two decades trying to give other young people the tools to follow.
On Sept. 16, Sheriff Rogers and Nicole Williams-Lockett were inducted into HPHA’s Pillars of Fame, a recognition program that has honored former program participants since 2005. The ceremony also included presentations to current participants and recent High Point Central High School graduates, the Rising Star Award to Semma Q. Ossi,, and the announcement of the Seeds-to-Success Scholarship recipient, Salam Hamzeh.
The Pillars of Fame program was established to honor those who once were program participants and whose lives have enriched others through their achievements. The HPHA believe there is no better inspiration for an individual than to be influenced by someone who has risen above the stereotypes, stigmas and institutional roadblocks to become successful and a pillar of the community. A Sheriff’s Journey From the Housing Authority of the City of High Point
Rogers spent years in law enforcement before voters in Guilford County sent him to the top job. He served with the High Point Police Department and the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, and he pursued entrepreneurial endeavors along the way. In 2018, he was elected sheriff.
The education he pursued along that path reflects the same deliberate climb. Rogers earned an associate’s degree from Love and Faith Bible College, a bachelor’s degree from ECPI University and a master’s degree from Walden University. None of that was handed to him. He built it, step by step, from a starting point that many people never get past.
His story is exactly what the HPHA Pillars of Fame was designed to amplify. The program was created not to celebrate people in the abstract, but to put faces and names in front of the next generation who need to see that public housing is not a ceiling. It is a floor.
Daniel Brooks Homes, where Sheriff Rogers once lived, was itself the subject of HPHA’s most significant recent redevelopment. Built in 1942 during segregation and the first African American public housing development in High Point, the site was transformed into Legacy Ridge, a $42 million mixed-income community developed in partnership with Laurel Street. The new development opened fully occupied in 2025 with a waiting list. Historical exhibits and archival materials are permanently installed throughout Legacy Ridge to ensure the community’s story remains present. That Sheriff Rogers is now returning, in a sense, to be honored in a ceremony connected to the same organization that once housed him, carries its own kind of weight.
Williams-Lockett’s Story From a GED Certificate to Agency Director
Nicole Williams-Lockett did not take a straight line. She attended Brittian Academy and earned her GED certificate. From there, she pursued certifications as a certified nursing assistant and medical technician through High Point Manor. More than 20 years later, she is the founder and agency director of True Love Home Care.
Her career has taken her through nursing homes, private-duty care, home care services and office management. That range is not incidental. It is the kind of broad, ground-level experience that tends to produce people who understand a sector from the inside out, and who build companies that reflect what they know actually works.
Williams-Lockett’s background as a Housing Choice Voucher Program participant connects her directly to one of HPHA’s largest programs. The agency administers 1,877 tenant-based Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, a program that provides rental assistance and, for many families, the stability needed to pursue education and career goals without the constant pressure of housing insecurity. For Williams-Lockett, that stability appears to have provided exactly that kind of foundation.
Entrepreneurship is a core theme of the HPHA Pillars of Fame this year. Founding a home care agency requires navigating licensure, staffing, billing, compliance and business development simultaneously. Williams-Lockett did it. Her inclusion among the 2026 honorees puts that achievement in front of current HPHA residents who may be wondering whether what they dream of is actually possible.
The Rising Star, Semma Q. Ossi, Steps Into the Spotlight
Semma Q. Ossi is the daughter of Qasim Ossi and Nawroz Hamo. She graduated from High Point Central High School with a 4.1 GPA, was a member of the National Honor Society, played soccer and volleyball, and participated in the school’s orchestra. She also serves as a committed volunteer in various community initiatives.
Ossi plans to continue her education at Guilford Technical Community College. She is the recipient of this year’s Rising Star Award, a recognition that originated in 2014 and is presented annually to a current outstanding HPHA high school student or recent high school graduate.
The Rising Star Award matters precisely because it intervenes early. Sheriff Rogers and Williams-Lockett are being recognized for what they built over decades. Ossi is being recognized right now, at the beginning. The message the HPHA sends with that timing is intentional: we see you before you’ve arrived.
High Point Affordable Housing as a Platform for Opportunity
The Housing Authority of the City of High Point was chartered on Jan. 4, 1940, under North Carolina law to provide decent, safe and sanitary housing to low-income residents. It administers 900 Public Housing units, 1, 877 Housing Choice Vouchers, and 101 Section 8 New Construction units and operates subsidiaries focused on homeownership, economic advancement and self-sufficiency. Its mission has always been about more than shelter.
HPHA’s programs span financial literacy workshops conducted by HPHA’s HUD-Certified Housing Counselors, , the Family Self-Sufficiency Program, youth academic services, college readiness through Project SOAR and career exposure through initiatives like Camp Med and the Summer Enrichment Program. The Seeds-to-Success Scholarships, which was organized by the agency’s Executive Roundtable Committee and consists of HPHA program participants, ties many of these programs together with the goal of building community investment from within.
The scholarships awarded to the Rising Star honoree and the Seeds-to-Success Scholarship recipient sits alongside the Pillars of Fame and Rising Star Award as part of what the HPHA frames as a pipeline: from housing stability to educational achievement to professional success and community leadership.
The affordable housing challenges facing agencies like HPHA are significant. Rising construction and operating costs, a freeze on additional housing vouchers, and growing demand all create real pressure. But the Pillars of Fame program points toward what HPHA argues is the longer answer: invest in participants, not just units. Build people toward self-sufficiency. Let them become the proof.
High Point Community Leadership Rooted in Shared History
Angela Jimenez, CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of High Point, was herself a former program participant. She grew up in public housing in High Point. She earned both a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Business Administration from High Point University. In November 2010, she became the agency’s first female chief executive since its founding in 1940. She is also a 2010 Pillars of Fame honoree.
That lineage is worth sitting with for a moment. The person running the Housing Authority of the City of High Point grew up in its housing. When she talks about what stability can lead to, she is not speaking theoretically. When she stood at the Sept. 16 ceremony and inducted Sheriff Rogers and Williams-Lockett into the Pillars of Fame, she was standing alongside them in the same story, not above it.
That shared history matters to what the program is actually trying to do. Individuals sitting in the audience at the induction ceremony does not just see a sheriff and an entrepreneur being honored by their housing authority. They see a CEO who came from where they are standing right now. They see a sheriff who slept under the same kind of roof they sleep under. They see a woman who built a company from a GED certificate and a nursing assistant certification and more than 20 years of showing up.
The High Point community leadership that has emerged through HPHA over more than 80 years of operation represents something that resists easy quantification. A sheriff who came up in public housing. An entrepreneur who started with a GED and built a home care agency from scratch. A high school graduate with a 4.1 GPA and a full life still ahead of her. These are not statistics. They are neighbors. They are the people that affordable housing, done right, helps produce.
The HPHA Pillars of Fame induction ceremony took place on Sept. 16. The Rising Star Award and the Seeds-to-Success Scholarship announcement were a part of the same event. For the participants in attendance, it was an afternoon that puts a name and a face on something many of them may not yet have words for: the idea that where they are right now is not where they have to stay.
That is not a small thing to show someone.
