This morning we're just getting the job ready for continued production on this gut rehab.
It's the fourth in a line of seven houses that we're rehabbing here in the northwest.
So basically what we do is we take these houses at a very minimal cost and we gut them down
to the studs and we rehab them up to the top standard for the construction world today.
So they're energy efficient and laid out nicely to accommodate a first time buyer or small
family.
Did these houses go on the market then?
They do.
They go on the market in the what's called the affordable housing bracket and we sell
them to first time buyers, pulled everything out of it, all the studs, all the plaster
and glass, changed the floor plan of the first floor, redid the second floor completely.
And so all these houses that I'm doing here in the northwest are three bedroom, one and
a half bath, up to the top efficiency standards and heated with the most efficient to heat
types.
This one is baseboard hot water with a backup heat pump.
The other houses are predominantly heat pump, heated and cooled.
A couple of the other ones are also solar net meter homes.
So whoever purchases those homes ends up paying one bill, an electric bill and generally it's
net metered, so they are minimal cost during the winter.
The staircases in all these houses, I'm putting in a winder stair and it's kind of a traditional
aspect to the homes in this part of Berlin.
It was kind of a space saving tool.
If you put a winder in, it takes up less space.
So the houses that have the winder, I keep it.
And then other houses that don't, I put it in as kind of my signature to the house.
A lot of these houses, the first floor is a very open floor plan.
So I come in and I see how we can structurally make it so that there's as little partitions
on the first floor as possible so that we can put in a heat pump system, which really
needs that open floor plan.
And then I try to fit in three bedrooms because it's a big cellar to have three bedrooms.
Squeeze in a couple of bathrooms and really try and make it flow so that it's easy to
move around and people are comfortable in them.
My name is Shannon Canelli and my role at NeighborWorks is outreach and communication
and a bunch of community building and engagement in Northwest Ireland.
Our initial grant is seven houses, but we plan on going beyond that and just continuing
to work.
And we also raised four blighted buildings, which are now community spaces.
Is that what this was?
This was a blighted building?
This was not.
The blighted buildings are just beyond saving.
Those ones are taken down to the ground and then Baxter Street Park is an example of what
we do after that.
This one was not a seizure then?
This one was not a seizure.
No, those are up on Parkhouse.
So what's the history of this house?
That's a great question.
And I'm not too aware of it.
I know it since two years ago, it's been vacant and it was just a real eyesore on the
street.
It had like black tarp put up across one of its roofs, which was like leaning in.
So it's been vacant for a while and it was just seen as a house that was prime for rehabilitation
and getting it back into the hands of a homeowner who can have a healthy, safe and efficient
home and be adding to our tax base in Ireland.
What's the mission of NeighborWorks here in the Northwest?
What do you hope to accomplish when you get there?
We are working hand in hand with Project Vision and really working to build great neighborhoods
and we see it as a multi-prong strategy.
So we're focusing on physical improvements like the house behind you and then also community
building and engagement, which is everything from surveys of the neighborhood to outdoor
movie nights, to block parties, to community planning for public spaces like Baxter Street
Park and in the future, Water Street Park.
Yeah, it's pretty, yeah.
There's been a lot of porch work done there.
Yeah.
There's been a lot of new porches these days.
They see us working.
So here we are at 39 Pine Street down in the Northwest of Rowland and this is our third
house and it is a historical property.
So we had to follow certain historical guidelines in the construction of this house, which means
all of the windows had to maintain their specific placement, which kind of changed the way in
which I laid out the house and the rooms and everything.
NeighborWorks has done quite a bit to raise the quality of life in the Northwest neighborhood
in Rowland.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
I can.
We've been at it for a number of years.
We actually were involved in the cleanup of Water Street Park in 1987.
So we've been invested in Northwest Rowland for decades.
So recently we've been ramping that up along with Project Vision, so really focusing on
getting community out, getting to know each other, increasing levels of safety and also
levels of just neighborliness.
We know there's already a strong tightly knit neighborhood here, but really working to increase
those connections.
And we do that through movie nights, so we have an open space over at 113 Library and
people can actually come out on Saturday nights and watch a movie that we put on there.
We also do all sorts of block parties and then just smaller community events.
We have a fall festival coming up on October 14th, and that's going to be at 113 Library
again too.
It's the second one we've done, so it's pumpkin carving, eating apple cider and donuts, and
then also watching a Halloween themed movie at the end of the night.
So just a bunch of fun.
And what we've seen over the past couple years is that there's more attendance at these
events.
When we do community surveys, we're seeing people reporting higher levels of neighborhood
satisfaction and also community involvement.
People are just really happy to be here.
It's a neighborhood that they choose to live in.
This is a We Can Fix It.
It's a women's home maintenance course.
The idea came to me because the first two houses in the seven houses here in the northwest
were sold to single women.
One of them was a small woman with two children and the other one was just a single woman.
And I kept thinking, man, I'm giving them these houses that have about 15 years of solid
no maintenance needs.
But then there's the little things that pop up over time, like a breaker switch or just
like a plumbing issue here and there.
And I thought, you know, I really hope we're not setting them up for failure.
So I came up with this program based on that need.
And the more research I did, the more I realized that I think it's 60% of heads of household
are females at this point.
So We Can Fix It is a five-week, pretty intensive home maintenance class for women taught by
me.
It's very, it's very unintimidating and it's designed to look at all the different systems
inside the household, plumbing, electrical, you know, doors and windows and any other
needs that come up based on questioning.
And yeah, the first class was a wild success.
Like all the women are pretty pumped and we have this Facebook page and there was 12 in
the first class.
And the class was filled up in 48 hours of posting it.
And now we're working on filling the next class and that will be starting at the end
of September, the 26th.
And it'll be another five-week course that we teach over at Brock.
And we also use these houses here as onsite work.
And yeah, we get our hands right under the sinks and look at some of the electrical and
go poke around in the basement and really figure out what makes a house tick.
At NeighborWorks, we're a social enterprise and so we can put mission first.
And our mission is to keep homes affordable in Rutland and also Addison and Bennington
counties and then Vermont, hopefully at some point.
But for now, focusing on this neighborhood, we're improving these homes so that they are
very high-quality homes and then selling them at a price point so that the homeowner who
can qualify for this house really has a home that they're walking into with no major maintenance
or repairs in the next 10 years with energy bills that are zero or very affordable and
just no headaches.
So they're walking into home ownership, which we know is great for homeowners, for our local
economy and for neighborhoods at a very affordable price.
I have taught homebuyer education at NeighborWorks a couple of times and when you ask people
why they're interested in becoming homeowners, one of the first things that comes to mind
is the liberty of it.
They're no longer asking their landlord if they can dig up the backyard to make a garden
or to paint the color of their walls.
And we really value that.
As Americans, it's the American dream.
But we also want to keep these properties affordable.
And so our homeland grant that's a shared equity covenant that we place on the property
allows us to both give someone the freedom of home ownership but then also keep it affordable
into the future.
So again, their down payment, which is basically, it feels like a grant to them, stays with
the property and makes it perpetually affordable so that the neighborhood doesn't get overpriced
and that average Rutland citizens can afford to live here.
They're a working class blue-collar town and we want to keep it that way.
