A Home for Everyone: Interpretation for Binghampton Community Land Trust

The Binghampton Community Land Trust is working in the neighborhood of Binghampton to provide affordable housing to families who have rented here for years. A CLT model of affordable housing guarantees long-term affordability, and we are finding that refugee and immigrant families are most interested in this model of affordable housing.  We have met with families from Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Mexico and discovered that we need access to interpretation in order to communicate with these families.  Headphones would allow us to connect with interpreters who could translate to each person in his or her language whenever we have conversations wtih them.  A major barrier of language would thus be eliminated and misunderstandings would be minimized.  

1.  Purchase the headphones and set up interpretation access. (January 2024)

2.  Meet with families and explain what we are doing and how they can participate. (ongoing)

3.   Build relationships across the language barriers that allow us to build community as we work with them to access affordable housing. (ongoing)

Binghampton is the home of families from all over the world, families who often are trapped in difficult rental situations and who long for a home of their own.  The community land trust model of affordable housing is a means of providing those houses and building community between families and with the larger neighborhood.  Language is a barrier that prevents many of these families from thriving, and being able to interpret for them as we work with them to provide housing will break down that barrier and build trust.  It will also model to the neighborhood ways to reach out across the divide of culture and language and build relationships, strengthening this community.