NY organization helps families ‘fill the gaps’ when other assistance stops

When a tornado, hurricane or other disaster strikes, there is typically a rush of media attention and emergency assistance. But then, the spotlight shifts and families are left to struggle to fill the “gaps” that remain, on their own.

That’s what happened when Tropical Storm Irene hit the Eastern Coast on Aug. 29, 2011, and flood waters poured out of the Adirondack Mountains through the tiny town of Keene, in northern New York. The area was declared a disaster zone, and even after federal funds and private donations poured in, many families and businesses were still fighting to “stay afloat” months later. Fortunately, Housing Assistance Program of Essex County (HAPEC), which is celebrating its 10th year as a member of the NeighborWorks network, considers filling gaps to be its core mission.

Consider the story of Russ and Angie. The flood waters seriously damaged the stone foundation and first floor of the front section of their modest home, and the back addition with the bedrooms for their two preschool-aged children was destroyed.

The family of four moved temporarily onto the grounds of a local summer camp, while they began repairs using funds from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), community donations and their own retirement savings. However, although they were able to move back into their home in March of 2012, they didn’t have enough money to rebuild their children’s bedrooms, forcing the family to “double-up” in cramped quarters. Government assistance had dried up, and “donor fatigue” had set in, even among their friends. “Our family is at the end of our rope emotionally,” Russ wrote in one email to HAPEC, describing their plight.

A team from Habitat for Humanity joined HAPEC to help
re-build the family home of Russ and Angie.

That’s when HAPEC stepped in. With the help of a NeighborWorks America emergency-assistance grant, the organization helped the family pay off its outstanding loans, prepped the site for the re-build and recruited a Habitat for Humanity team to construct the new shell. Russ and Angie finished the walls and flooring. The finishing touch, again provided by HAPEC, was a wood-pellet stove for heating.

“Given what they had been through, and the exhaustion of their personal savings, Russ and Angie would not have been able to complete this work on their own for quite some time,” says Bruce Misarski, community development director for HAPEC. “Now, their house is ‘whole’ again, and they have bedrooms for their kids.”

HAPEC was founded in 1976 as the first local organization qualified to receive and administer HUD Section 8 rental assistance, which had just been authorized by Congress two years before. Today, HAPEC defines its focus much more broadly: to “alleviate economic distress, enhance personal dignity and cultivate self-reliance” in a rural county where employment mostly depends on low-wage, seasonal tourism and the household median income is 18 percent below the national average.

HAPEC services range from assistance with homebuyer education, to home repairs, to partnerships for the development of affordable multi-family housing. An impact assessment conducted for HAPEC and published in 2011 found that in one year, the organization:

• Created nearly 92 jobs – one of every 200 jobs in Essex County alone.
• Assisted 35 families in purchasing their first home.
• Helped 57 homeowners rehab their existing houses.
• Issued 650 rental-assistance vouchers.
• Managed 25 apartments for senior citizens.
• Provided foreclosure counseling for 44 families.

Alan Hipps, executive director, points to two keys that are instrumental to his organization’s success: effective fundraising – more than $2.5 million a year – and creative partnerships with other institutions, such as Habitat for Humanity and NeighborWorks America. “Our mission is simple, but ambitious: We strive to recognize community development and housing needs, advocate change and respond to opportunities.”

From parks to circuses: Oklahoma NeighborWorks group goes ‘out of the box’ to fight poverty

If there is a common challenge that afflicts all nonprofits, no matter  their scope of work, it’s finding a way to fund everything they want to do – especially infrastructure needs like staffing and space. The Little Dixie Community Action Agency, which proudly labels itself a “survivor” 45 years after its founding, has found a creative way to become more self-reliant:  managing parks for the State of Oklahoma.

“We bring in about half a million dollars from user fees every year,“ proudly explains Becky Reynolds, associate director. “At the same time, we’re saving money for the state government, creating additional opportunities for training and employment, and preserving camping, boating and other recreational activities for residents.”

Little Dixie first experimented with park management in the 1970s, when it was asked to manage the group camping area that served as the “home” for one of its youth programs. But it wasn’t until 1997 that park management became a planned strategy.

With a magnificent water view on three sides,
cabin #16 is a favorite at Hugo Lake State Park.

Expert at finding and qualifying for grant assistance, Little Dixie received funding via the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities Act of 1993 to draft a 10-year strategic plan for the three counties in its service area. During the resident dialogues that followed, community members vented their anger over the planned closing of two parks that generated tourism income as well as offering much-needed “green respite” through a marina, hiking trails, rental cabins and more. Little Dixie came to the rescue. Today, they are among four state parks managed by the agency.


Thinking out of the box makes Little Dixie 'go-to' agency
 
This “out-of-the-box” approach to generating income and providing service is why the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)  has relied on Little Dixie to provide technical assistance to other rural community action agencies in 11 states – well beyond its “home zone.”  Little Dixie is one of 10 affiliates in the NeighborWorks network to receive a Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) from the HHS, a program created as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty to increase self-sufficiency, improve living conditions and promote community pride in low-income regions.

“We’ve been a CSBG agency since 1972, and that means we focus on giving a “hand up” instead of just a “hand out,” explains Reynolds. For example, each of the families who transition to homeownership through the agency’s Self-Help Housing Program join with their friends, family and neighbors (usually a team of four to 10) to build their new home – what Little Dixie calls “building sweat equity.” The agency staff provides homeownership training, assists families with their loan applications to USDA Rural Development, secures sites for home construction and subcontracts skilled work such as plumbing and electricity. It’s a little like the Habitat for Humanity model, but with a lot more support built in.

Overcoming chronic unemployment by focusing on town's 'curb appeal'

With Little Dixie’s three primary counties ranked first, third and seventh in the state in terms of unemployment, one of the agency’s other significant challenges is working to support job creation, including nurturing a nascent tourist industry.

“We like to say that southeast Oklahoma is one of the best-kept secrets in the country,” laughs Reynolds. “Most people hear Oklahoma and they think of the desolate panhandle. But this part of the state is very beautiful, with lots of pine trees, lakes and rivers. People from Arkansas to Texas come here to hunt, tour the trails with four-wheelers or just relax in a luxury cabin.”

Through Little Dixie’s Small Business Loan Fund, it is helping residents nurture this growing source of revenue, as well as more unusual ventures – such as the renovation of an abandoned building for a circus museum and training gym for novice performers. Since 1937, as many as 22 circuses have called Hugo, Oklahoma, home during the winter – including three that currently tour the country during the warmer months. Performers who have long since stopped touring are buried in their own section of the town cemetery, called “Showmen’s Rest.”

A low-interest loan of $80,000 from Little Dixie is helping that dream become reality – and in the process bringing visitors into town and putting residents to work.

Vermont quarry closing brings economy down; NeighborWorks affiliate rallies residents

It’s a story that’s been repeated across America: What builds a town up is also what, eventually, brings it down. In Detroit, it was the auto industry. In West Rutland, Vermont, it was marble quarrying.

When high-quality marble deposits were discovered in the 1830s – followed by the extension of the railroad into town – Rutland was suddenly put on the map. The simultaneous decline of the famous quarries of Carrara in Tuscany, Italy, transformed it into one of the leading marble producers in the world. (The name of the main “drag”? “Marble Street,” of course.)

The double-whammy of a large strike in the 1930s and the Great Depression, however, took a toll from which the town never quite recovered. In 1986 the quarry was forced to close, plunging the outwardly idyllic enclave of “cows and jeans” into economic decline.

West Rutland today

“At its height, the quarry alone employed 2,400 people,” recalls Ludy Biddle, executive director of NeighborWorks of Western Vermont. “Now, there are only about 2,500 people living in the entire town and the county is the second-poorest in the state. For all social measures, it’s in the red – poverty, unemployment, teen pregnancies and, recently, foreclosures.”

Another recurring theme in America, however, is the recovery from adversity that’s possible when residents come together in response to crisis. The disastrous year of 1986 also is when the organization was founded by a group of local citizens to help the remaining residents stay in their homes by keeping them in good repair.  By the 1990s, the area serviced by NeighborWorks of Western Vermont had expanded from four neighborhoods to the entire county and a homeownership program was added to help both first-time buyers and a trickle of newcomers – primarily artists and families looking for a semi-rural lifestyle.

This year, the organization is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a chartered member of the NeighborWorks Rural Initiative, which strengthens communities with small populations by helping them integrate into their regional economies. It now serves three counties, not only with its original rehab assistance and homeownership counseling, but also with “financial fitness” coaching and foreclosure prevention. In 2012:

• Two foreclosed houses were purchased by the organization; rehab was begun on another five, with two completed and put on the market.
• 24 individuals graduated from the homebuyer education program and another 25 completed the organization’s financial-fitness training.
• Thirty-seven families successfully negotiated foreclosure alternatives with their mortgage lenders. Another 12 received coaching as they made the decision to opt for a reverse mortgage.
• Nearly $800,000 in loans was dispensed to pay for 40 home repairs.

Joan Jackson

Biddle is particularly proud of her organization's participation in the NeighborWorks Green Organization. In fact, in 2010, it was awarded a $4.5 million grant from the Department of Energy for its H.E.A.T. squad (Home Efficiency Assistance Team) – which now boasts the highest penetration rate in the country among similar programs.

Joan Jackson, a retired librarian who has lived in her Wallingford home since 1959, is just one example of the 577 households that received an “energy check-up” in 2012, thanks to the program. Her roof had been damaged by winter ice, the house was so cold she was constantly bundling up to stay warm and the increasing cost of fuel was a persistent worry due to her fixed income. But with the installation of insulation in her basement and upstairs walls, along with air sealing around her doors, ceiling and attic hatch, she is warmer and her fuel bills are 34 percent lower. (Watch a video interview with Biddle, as she explains just how the program works.)

“Twenty-five percent of the people we’ve been able to help with our H.E.A.T. squad are below 80 percent of the area’s median income – individuals who usually aren’t able to participate in programs like this, even though they need it the most,” says Biddle, adding that the organization is now looking for additional funds as the DOE grant sunsets. “The average household we serve spends 3-8 percent of their already-low income on energy. With H.E.A.T, they save an average of 386 gallons of fuel a year – about $1,500 a year. It’s central to our mission to make homeownership affordable.”

Enterprise Rose Fellowship Redefines Community Design at NeighborWorks Organizations

Blog by Kat Miller, NeighborWorks Rural Initiative
Miller is an AmeriCorps VISTA and recent graduate of Smith College, where she studied architecture.

The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, is a highly competitive and innovative program that places some of the nation’s finest early career architects in underserved communities across the country to team up with community development host organizations. The program is headed by Enterprise Community Partners’ National Design Initiatives, which offers a variety of programs that help build capacity for design leadership across the community development field.

The Rural Initiative and NeighborWorks America staff with
Rose Fellow Mark Matel (left) at the Bartlett bus yards 

NeighborWorks America is proud to have two Enterprise Rose Fellows currently working at NeighborWorks organizations: Geoffrey Barton at Mountain Housing Opportunities in Asheville, North Carolina and Mark Matel at Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

By bringing designers directly into the communities in which they are working, the Rose Fellowship boosts an organization’s capacity to create affordable, sustainable, and well designed communities. We often think about design as being strictly aesthetic. Good design, however, must be measured more three dimensionally; as something that transforms not only appearance, but also performance. To achieve this, the Rose Fellowship boasts a bottom-up approach towards design. This approach rests upon three core principles:  design excellence, sustainability, and first and foremost, community engagement.
 
Mark has certainly embraced this bottom-up approach as Project Manager for Bartlett Place, Nuestra Comunidad’s new mixed-use development that is transforming a vacant eight acre bus yard into a “creative village”. Tapping into Roxbury’s rich artists’ population, Bartlett Place will offer a variety of public spaces, commercial storefronts, and housing types to both provide new opportunities for current neighborhood residents and attract new populations.

As Project Manager, Mark is involved with overseeing all aspects of the project ranging from site planning to real estate development to contracting, etc.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Bartlett Place, however, has emerged in between the planning and construction phases of the project. As a liaison between the production team and Bartlett’s primary client, the Roxbury community, Mark has facilitated “Bartlett Events,” as a platform to raise excitement and engage the community in the months leading up to construction. An of example of this is MuralFest, Bartlett’s kickoff event  where local artists came together to beautify the site with murals and sculpture, transforming the old Bartlett bus yards from a drab vacant field of asphalt into a vibrant arts/events space. This new space will be used throughout the summer to keep Bartlett alive until construction starts next fall.  

In addition to providing interim programming for the site, Bartlett Events is also being used as a way to test ideas that can be re-integrated into Bartlett Place permanently. In this way, Bartlett’s design process is fundamentally rooted in the community. 

Our visit to Nuestra Comunidad and the Bartlett Yards demonstrated that good community-based design is as much about dealing with social issues as it is about dealing with architecture and building issues. This concept is certainly evident in the community-based design work that Mark is doing at Bartlett, and is echoed across the country, where a legacy of other Rose Fellows tackle similar design issues in underserved communities. 

Take a look at what Rose Fellow, Geoffrey Barton, is working on at Mountain Housing Opportunities  (one of our newest additions to the NeighborWorks Rural Initiative!) and visit the Enterprise National Design Initiatives website to learn more about the fellowship and their other programs. Applications for the Enterprise Pre-Development Design Grant are now open and close on July 10.