Thank You for a Great Affordable Housing Week!
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We would like to thank you all for helping us put together our second Affordable Housing Week! Our small staff could not create such a successful event without the dozens of people and organizations that helped us every step of the way. Of course, we also want to thank everyone who attended our events. We were thrilled to have a chance to talk to you about affordable housing, and we hope that you learned a lot and had a great time. With your support, we will make next year's Affordable Housing Week celebration even bigger and better!That said, this year will be hard to beat. We received proclamations from 10 Polk County communities officially declaring Affordable Housing Week. We were featured on KCWI's "Great Day" and WHO Radio. We met a great crowd of landlords and helped them connect with resources. We heard from Debi Durham, and from many of you at our first planning session for Housing Tomorrow. We showed a bus full of people what affordable housing looks like in our community. And finally, we celebrated the great work of very talented high school students as part of our Design Challenge competition. It was a busy week, but we had a lot of fun! We hope you did too.See photos from all of our events on our Facebook page by clicking the links below:
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Habitat's Critical Repairs Rock the Block® One Home at a Time
Continuing to Revitalize Communities through the Rock the Block® Program
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Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity (Greater Des Moines Habitat) kicked off the 2014 Rock the Block® season with a 3-day event April 15-17 in the Martin Luther King Jr. Park neighborhood. More than 200 volunteers worked alongside homeowners to complete the first 15 projects of the year. There are more than 100 Habitat Rock the Block® projects planned for the full season. This being the third consecutive year working with the Martin Luther King Jr. Park residents, Greater Des Moines Habitat has completed 73 home repair and maintenance projects and seven community space projects in the neighborhood. The organization has also built 18 new homes in the neighborhood.
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Tomorrow Begins Today Event starts planning process for Housing Tomorrow |
Those of you who attended any of our Affordable Housing Week events may have noticed a theme. We talked all week about Housing Tomorrow, Greater Des Moines' first regional plan for affordable housing. We even devoted our spring bus tour to it. Needless to say, PCHTF is excited to have an opportunity to talk about housing with all of you over the next year as part of the planning process. That process began on April 24 with our first planning session, following the Business Record's Commercial Real Estate Trends & Issues Forum.
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Local 100,000 Homes Team Finishes Registry Week Collaborative effort surveys the homeless |
The 100,000 Homes Campaign in Des Moines is now well underway! Primary Health Care (PHC) is currently leading the local 100,000 Homes Campaign effort to provide permanent residence for people experiencing homelessness in Des Moines. The campaign has already housed 94,486 Americans in 238 cities, including 28,959 veterans. The first step towards reaching their goal is an event called Registry Week, which took place in Des Moines April 21st-27th.
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Our Neighbors Are In the News Check out PCHTF on KCWI's "Great Day" |
What better way to kick off Affordable Housing Week than to sit down with the hosts of KCWI 23's "Great Day"? PCHTF Executive Director Eric Burmeister had a blast discussing our Affordable Housing Week events and our "Can I Be Your Neighbor?" campaign. We even got some new neighbors! If you missed it, or want to watch it all over again, click below to watch the segment on YouTube. |
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Say Hello to Our New Intern! Get to know Paige Curtis |
My name is Paige Curtis and I am the new project and event management intern for the Polk County Housing Trust Fund. While working for PCHTF this summer, my job is to assist in the organization of the "Can I Be Your Neighbor?" campaign in coordination with Metro Arts' Jazz in July concerts.
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Design Challenge Winner Has the Floor Discussion with 18-year-old Christine Orlanes |
When she was just eight years old, Christine Orlanes remembers drawing floor plans and designing room layouts while others around her were doodling in their notebooks. Ten years later the Ankeny High School Senior's talent helped her win the 2014 Design Challenge for Affordable Housing and a $2,000 scholarship from the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines. Here's what Christine had to say about the competition, why her school did so well and her future plans.
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Polk County, Principal, Register Media receive United Way awards
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At United Way of Central Iowa's annual LIVE UNITED luncheon on April 22, The Principal was honored with the Spirit of Central Iowa award recognizing its exceptional giving, advocacy, and volunteer work. Polk County and Register Media were also honored with Advocate awards for their efforts to raise awareness of social issues in our area. We are proud of the efforts of these organizations to support PCHTF and other organizations in Central Iowa. To read about the other honorees, click HERE. |
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Angela Connolly named a "Hero for Homeless"
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Central Iowa Shelter & Services awarded PCHTF Board member and Polk County Supervisor Angela Connolly with their annual "Hero for Homeless" award at their gala on April 23. Connolly was recognized for her work in raising funds for CISS' new downtown facility and for her support of mental health care in Polk County. To read more, click HERE. |
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Come ride the bus with us as we explore affordable housing issues in our area! Our 2014 tours will be held July 18 and October 17. To register, click HERE.
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Read Past Issues of this eNewsletter
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To read past issues of our monthly eNewsletter, click HERE. |
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Follow Us:
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Contact Us 108 3rd Street Ste. 350 Des Moines, IA 50309 Phone: (515) 282-3233 Fax: (515) 282-8444
Please make sure that you add info@pchtf.org to your address book to ensure delivery of email communications from Polk County Housing Trust Fund.
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