Housing Development Alliance

Sixteen years and one week ago, I started working at the Housing Development Alliance as its first employee. At that time, we had a budget of $35,000 for the year and high hopes. Sixteen years later, thanks to the hard work of the staff, board and volunteers, we have built a 137 new homes, acquired-repaired-sold 16 homes, completed over 275 repairs, and developed 35 rental units. Our budget is now in excess of $3.7 million. To put that in perspective, at our current rate of production we spend twice as much in a week as we did in the entire first year of operation! We have also expanded our service area taking on 3 underserved counties.

While it’s nice to think back on the last 16 years and all we have accomplished, I get even more excited to think about the next 16 years. Assuming a modest 5% per year increase in production, in the next 16 years we can build over 500 homes and repair another 1250! That would go long way towards wiping out substandard housing in our community.

I’ll confess that I find the numbers hard to believe. 500 homes? 1250 repairs? Can we really do all that? Then I remember that sixteen years ago, I could not imagine building 137 houses or completing 275 repairs. Yes, it will be a lot or work, but we have proved that we - our board, staff and volunteers - are not afraid of hard work. So I invite you to join with me for another 16 years hard work and great accomplishments. With so much to do, it’s time to get busy.

Labels: History, Scott McReynolds

Hello all you Housing Development Alliance friends out there in cyber space!
Well it is my turn this week to do the blog. My name is Tonya Perkins. I am the Administrative Asst & the Accounting Clerk for the organization. My job is to make sure I have payroll done for the hard working carpenters you all love so well. I also do many other things here. I answer the phone, so if you call it is probably me on the other end! My primary job is to assist the Director of Finance so I work with a lot of numbers.

I really like my work here. It’s not every day you can come to a job you love and enjoy. We get to help so many people either with building a new home or just simple things as repairs, getting a porch put on their house or a ramp to help them get their loved ones in their homes.

We are having a group of 17 volunteers come in this week. They are from Westminster Ohio. That is just one of the many places we have had volunteers from this year. We have enjoyed having all of them here to help with home repairs, or help build new homes. All of our volunteers seemed to have enjoyed themselves this year. I would like to say thanks to all of them for coming and helping in our community & to the carpenters for all the hard work they do for us. Thanks guys you are a fun crew to work with.

Recently Pam Short and I went to work related trainings in Philadelphia. We had a great experience. We had never flown before and it was scary at first, but by the time we came back we had adjusted. We were in “Philly” for a week and found the experience very educational. We got a lot of helpful information to use in our jobs. I also managed to return to Hazard with a head full of sutures but I will save that story for my next blog.

We met a lot of new people at the training that do jobs similar to our own, and learned much about other non-profit work in other areas. It was hard for us to leave our families for the week, but we enjoyed the experience and had a good time. But, there is no place like home and I was happy to get back to my family and friends.


Well my blog is finished. I hope you have enjoyed my story telling time. You can always come see us or call, we would be glad to help you with repairs or get you an affordable home if we can. And if you feel the urge to help lives we will always welcome volunteers. Thank you for checking out on our blog. Ya’ll come back and see us now ya hear!

Hello, after a few months off, we are back! We want to honor the work done by John Rasche while he was here (oh, how we miss him), and start updating our blog and Facebook account more regularly. We now have a schedule with a different staff member posting each week – and since this was my grand idea, I get to go first.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Chris Doll and I am the Assistant Director at the Housing Development Alliance. I do many different tasks as part of my work, but my primary job is to get our clients from the point they first contact us to the point that either their new home or repairs begin; which is both easier and tougher than it sounds. I will probably post more on that later, but for now this is what’s been going on recently -

The weather in Perry County turned cold, or at least “chilly”. The leaves are starting to fall and the number of calls from folks needing help has picked up. Every year with the first cold snap HDA gets an increase in calls from folks needing to get repairs completed before winter. This means that my department (mainly Pam, our Housing Counselor) scrambles to try to match people up with funding and get applications through the system as quickly as possible, so it has been an exceptionally busy week.

Last week we were very excited, we sold Claude Neace his house. Some of our summer volunteers worked on his house, and we hope to have some pictures of the finished home posted soon. When Claude first contacted us he was nowhere near being eligible for a home. Through a lot of work on his part he got a good job, became eligible, and was able to buy a new home. As I stated, I do many things as part of my job, and one of them is that I get to be the person that hands our clients the keys to his/her/their new house. Being there to give Claude his keys is one of the reasons that I enjoy what I do, and it reminds me of the importance of our work. It was a wonderful day.

Chris

Labels: Chris Doll, Claude Neace