News from REACH Home 2018-19
The clean up is almost completed thanks to
John
Curran
and an extraordinary group of volunteers, see the photos below. We are most grateful to Dimitri House, Inc. for allowing us to store our mattresses, beds, and other items in this building for the present.
A final meeting of the REACH Team for this year's home will take place on
Monday, May 12 at 1:00 p.m
. at REACH Home. We hope to have other gatherings during the summer for the Team, Anyone interested in joining us will be welcome. Time and place to be announced.
At this past week's Board meeting it was decided to appoint a
Shelter Committe
e and our Co-Chair,
Andy Carey
, has agreed to convene this Committee. He will be assisted by several other board members. Over the next month a clear charge to this committee will be drafted and presented to the board. The charge will include planning for the coming winter shelter and the continuing quest to find a suitable house near the proposed Tiny Home Village that could serve both as a base for REACH operations, group meetings from the Village, office space for our support team, as well as offer shelter in the winter months.
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News from the REACH Tiny Home Village
Tiny Home Committee Board Report May 1, 2019
On behalf of the Tiny Home Village committee I am submitting this report to the REACH board.
- The environmental survey was completed on the 1179 St. Paul Street site by CPL Architecture. No issues were found with the property. Our next step is the submission of the Development Proposal for Vacant Land to the City Real Estate Department. The submission date for proposals has not been posted but it is thought to be the middle to the end of June.
- Initial steps have begun to identify an architectural firm that will be willing to draft a site plan and an architectural sketch of our tiny home. We have received one proposal from the architect on our committee and the Greater Living Architectural firm has expressed interest in working with us and providing some of their services pro bono.
- Committee members visited NextGen which is a digital manufacturing and design technologies company to explore how they may be of help to us in the manufacturing of a tiny home.
- RMAPI held a meeting with all grantees. An overview of their database was provided. We will have access to this data base as view only but will be able to request reports/graphs when needed. It appears it will be a very collaborative group that will provide us with community relations help and contacts.
- A discussion was held with Miguel Melendez of Ibero-American Development Corporation regarding our project. They are interested in our project and have skills in building a collaborative community. They have offered to help us organize a community wide meeting when the time is right.
- A meeting with Home Leasing provided us direction as to next steps in preparation for meeting with City Zoning.
- Land Restoration continues. Volunteers were utilized to clear foundation debris from the property and moved paving stones to the back of the property to stabilize the area.
- A Grant was recently submitted to the Presbyteries with another grant to be submitted to the Episcopal Dioceses by June 1st. A meeting was held with two women in the community with Grant and fundraising expertise. Valuable information was provided us which we will explore over the coming months.
Respectively Submitted
Susan Maxwell –Chair
Meet the Committee from left to right -- Deacon Dan Callan, Sarah Peters, Marcia Reaver, John Curran, Eric Menz, Eleanor Coleman, friend of Eleanor's, Stephen Smith, Susan Maxwell.
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Notes from the May Board meeting:
- Welcomed Lydia Worboys, Treasurer
- Received the retiring Treasurer's report.
- Adopted new ByLaws and Policies as suggested by our Attorney.
- Appointed a Shelter Committee Chair and Board members, other members to be recruited from the REACH Team.
- Appointed a Grant Committee and sent them their charge.
- Appointed an Executive Committee consisting of the two co-chairs, Andy Carey and Peter Peters, Board member Deborah Peiffer, Secretary (non-voting) Sarah Peters, and our Treasurer, Lydia Worboys, as needed.
- Reviewed notes re Board Development and put invited ideas for recruiting additional Board members onto next month's agenda.
- Adopted and sent a charge to the Tiny Home Committee and received their report.
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Meet the Board -
in each of the next several Newsletters we will introduce our readers to one member of the REACH Board:
Deacon Dan Callan has been on the REACH Team almost from the very beginning. Dan grew up in Rochester attending local Roman Catholic schools and then went to University of Notre Dame to major in chemical engineering. Eventually he earned a Ph.D. from Penn State in Industrial Design Engineering. Dan served seventeen years in the USAF using his engineering and now flight skills as a weapons officer and navigator. All this time his friends and colleagues noted that Dan lived and breathed his Catholic faith, especially since Vatican II. Many encouraged him to pursue a calling to diaconal ministry with his church, and he did. Seven years ago he was ordained a deacon and in that role finds ways to encourage the church to meet the needs of "the least among us."
Dan first became involved with REACH as an advocate for us with the Diocesan leadership. REACH wanted to open its first winter shelter using the old rectory building of Our Lady of Americas. Some of the administrators did not feel that REACH had the experience or capacity to take this on, but Dan assured them that we had excellent leadership and team members who were committed to this ministry. He offered to use his deacon "spare" time to be sure that all would be well. And so REACH Home of 2015-16 was brought into being.
Since that time Dan has been our key person in taking care of any necessary building or utility needs that we have to address. We have been blessed by his engineering and practical skills as well as his compassionate care for those who become our guests.
Dan believes in REACH's mission to provide shelter for the housing deprived and to do so with a welcome and not a judgement. He believes that we are called to love our neighbors and that love is what enables each of us to prosper to become the person God means us to be. We are blessed to have him as a part of the REACH organization.
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Events and actions for REACH members:
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Resources that may interest our readers:
The National Alliance to End Homelessness State of Homelessness Report for 2019.
Some points of interest in the report: (1) New York State has the 2
nd
highest rate of homelessness in the nation after the District of Columbia, (2) Since 2007, NY has experienced a
47%
increase
in homelessness. (Thirty-eight (38) states have seen a decrease in homelessness.) (3) Emergency shelter inventory in NY has increased by 82% since 2007. (4) 15% more households in NY are living “doubled up” from 2007 to 2017.
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News of Interest:
Cowork Downtown and the Rochester Design Center bring professionals together to meet housing needs
Cowork Downtown opened last year with a desire to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce, offering shared workspace where bookkeepers, attorneys, web designers, and all manner of professionals work together under the same roof.
But the founders of the organization wanted to be more than just another co-work space where professionals network and collaborate, they wanted to find a way to harness the collective talents of their partners to give back. So founders Dani Polidor and Sabine Mornet-Sally met with the backbone staff at RMAPI, using the community collaborative approach and the RMAPI Guiding Principles to create a partner non-profit called Rochester Design Center.
Cowork Downtown was founded to collaborate with the Rochester Design Center, pulling together professionals from across a range of specialties to help local residents in need of housing before they reach crisis levels.
“We want to connect with people in need and help get them situated into safe housing where they can start to heal and get treatment for medical or psychiatric trauma and get help from social services,” Mornet-Sally said.
The approach aligns perfectly with the RMAPI Guiding Principles to address structural racism, address trauma, and build community. It also takes on the person-centered approach that RMAPI advocates across the service-delivery spectrum, recognizing that every person’s experience is unique and requires and individualized approach.
The organization also finds a way to utilize the talents of people across a wide spectrum, bringing an entire community of professionals together in an effort to help meet the basic needs of their neighbors.
“You can’t do everything, but everyone can do something,” Polidor said. “Dignified housing for all is a basic necessity that everyone deserves and we now know through research that design transforms lives.”
Italicized paragraph by the REACH editor. Source of this news:
http://endingpovertynow.org/success_stories/cowork-downtown-and-the-rochester-design-center-bring-professionals-together-to-meet-basic-needs/
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Please note our Newsletter will not be published in June. We hope to have a mid-summer one at the end of July.
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Thank you for your interest and support of REACH.
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