|
Addison Housing Works
35 Years of Growing Community
Addison Housing Works is celebrating its 35th Anniversary in 2024, and in honor of this milestone, we are looking back at all the ways our work has grown community in Addison County, from our first Manufactured Housing Community to our most recent development of 20 new homes at Firehouse Apartments. Over the course of the year, we will be highlighting some of our proudest achievements as well as the people who bring our communities to life. Homes are so much more than bricks and mortar, and we hope these stories will illuminate various aspects of what it means to have a home through the eyes of our friends and neighbors. You can browse the stories below as we release them. Then, on Friday, September 13, 2024, we invite you to join us on the Bristol Town Green for our 35th Anniversary Bash featuring live performances, tours, food, and other ways to celebrate growing community together.
|
|
35 Years: A Retrospective
Our first vignette of our 35th anniversary series is a short video timeline of our journey from 1989 through 2024, from our roots as a Community Land Trust conserving land for housing and community purposes, to Addison County's primary nonprofit owner, developer, and manager of permanently affordable housing.
|
|
|
|
35 Years of: Making Homes Affordable
We're proud to share the next installment in our 35th Anniversary series, a feature of our newest property Firehouse Apartments in Bristol. Making homes like Firehouse affordable is a critical part of our mission and also an increasingly difficult challenge as we confront skyrocketing construction costs and unprecedented numbers of people who are houseless. To make affordable housing possible, AHW has to bring together multiple funding sources (nine in the case of Firehouse Apartments) for which we face stiff competition. The results are worth it though--Firehouse enabled families with kids to move out of motels and into permanent homes, seniors and people with mobility issues to move into one-level homes more suited to their needs, and employees of local businesses to find housing near their work, keeping Addison County's economy vibrant.
|
|
35 Years of: Thriving Resident Communities
For our next 35th Anniversary featurette, we're highlighting one of AHW's longtime residents of Lindale Manufactured Housing Community in Middlebury, Elaine Lathrop. Elaine began working for Middlebury College in 1980, first as a secretary to the Dean of Faculty Development and then working her way up to Office Manager at the Bread Loaf School of English, where she served from 1994 until her recent retirement in 2022. One of Elaine's favorite pastimes is quilting. She writes, "I actually started quilting because of my mom. In the fall of 1994, she went to a quilting club meeting and came home very enthusiastic. She said I had to come with her the next month which I did and was hooked. As a new quilter, I took as many classes as I could and have even taught a few classes at Quilter's Corner of Middlebury Sew and Vac. I belong to two quilting groups: Red Clover Quilters and Milk and Honey Quilter's Guild. I thank God for showing me this path of creativity as it allows me to be of service to humanity."
|
|
|
|
35 Years of: Community-Led Vision
Announcing the next installment of our 35th Anniversary Featurette series, an interview with founding board member Cheryl Mitchell!
The theme of our 35th anniversary is “Growing Community” and since you can’t have growth without roots, in this piece we decided to go all the way back to the beginning to find ours. We reached out to one of our founding board members, Cheryl Mitchell, to learn more about what inspired a group of community leaders to come together in 1989 to found our organization. For her, the spark grew out of parents who always made sure that “friends, neighbors, and total strangers got what they needed,” followed by a career at the Parent Child Center bearing witness to the power of housing to strengthen families. |