Strengthening Slavic Village One Home at a Time

A strong and healthy neighborhood depends on a stable community of neighbors who love their safe and warm homes. Since, 2015, Slavic Village Development has raised over $40,000 that went directly to 33 residents to make needed home repairs. With “One Home at a Time”, we would like to expand this program by not only raising money for direct home repairs, but also to partner with the highly-regarded Home Repair Resource Center to offer scholarships for their six-week “How-To” Series that will teach our residents the foundations of electrical repairs, carpentry, plumbing, and exteriors. 

1.       SVD will secure the services of the Home Repair Resource Center to offer six “How-To” two-hour classes to our residents. The cost to offer each series of six classes to ten students is $1,500, or $150 per resident participant. Our goal is to raise $3,000 so that twenty households in Slavic Village can learn how to take care of their own homes. These participants will also have access to HRRC’s Tool Lending Library in order to make repairs even more accessible.

2.       Not every homeowner has the physical capabilities to repair their own homes, or may have needs that require many hands. SVD actively solicits volunteers (including those who respond through ioby) to schedule “Fix-a-Thons”. Each Fix-a-Thon has a budget of $1,000 per house for materials as well as food and drink for our hard working volunteers. Our goal is to raise $7,000 to conduct seven Fix-a-Thons.

3.       Any money that we raise over $10,000 will go directly to SVD’s 50-50 Home Rehabilitation Grant Program to provide matching grants of between $500 and $2,500 to make needed repairs to bring homes up to code through roof repairs, exterior painting, window replacement, and other necessary projects to make homes warm and safe. Our goal is to raise $20,000 for the Grant Program.

Throughout the over 30 year history of our organization, Slavic Village Development has helped thousands of our residents become homeowners, and have helped many more to gain access to funds and volunteer services to make needed repairs to their homes. Much of this is done through aggressive grantwriting and strategic partnerships. What we have found is that these resources are oftentimes targeted at families with school-aged children, senior citizens, veterans, and other special groups who are all certainly worthy of help. Then, there are many of our residents who are no less worthy, but who fall between the cracks because they are not a part of one of these groups, or they do not fall below certain poverty levels.

One Home at a Time focuses on what each resident needs in order to live in a safe and healthy home. This will include providing matching grants to residents to pay the material costs of minor renovations, offering free access to home-repair workshops conducted by the Home Repair Resource Center, and organizing “Fix-A-Thons” that bring volunteers to help paint, hammer, and landscape, thereby stretching the dollars that are raised, thus providing more residents the help they need to stay in their homes.

By helping our neighbors stay in their homes, you are helping to stabilize our community by strengthening the bonds of friendship and trust. Every time that a neighbor moves due to a roof that is beyond repair or a porch that can no longer be safely crossed, we not only lose that neighbor, but we also lose a history of friendships that kept other long-time residents in their homes. We also lose a neighbor who is there to welcome new residents to their new neighborhood.