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04/26/2017 08:30 AMAs long as Lauren Ashe can remember, she has been drawn to volunteer service and work focused on helping the less fortunate meet their basic needs of affordable housing and food for the family table.
“In college, I did a lot of spring break service projects to help with community builds in Maine and Pennsylvania. I worked at a Soup Kitchen for kids and in college, at a group home for adolescents,” Lauren says.
Her first job out of college was with the Waterford Youth Services Bureau. This led initially to a job with a senator in the Connecticut State Legislature before she returned to the non-profit arena with a job as project manager for the Waterbury Development Corporation. In this post, she worked on the team overseeing the $150 million renovation of the Palace Theater as a building block for downtown redevelopment.
A move to Old Saybrook to be nearer to her family six years ago meant a choice to stay home with her young children for a few years, but five years ago, she saw the opening for executive director of the shoreline’s HOPE Partnership, applied, and was hired. This let her return to her passion: Helping the working poor gain access to safe affordable housing.
HOPE Partnership is a non-profit organization that acts as a catalyst for the development of affordable housing options along the shoreline and lower Middlesex County.
“We are a catalyst in that we’ve been laying the groundwork to help open people’s minds to the concept that affordable housing isn’t scary. We’re just trying to meet the housing needs of people already living in our area,” Lauren says.
To this end, Lauren and volunteers from her 16-member HOPE Partnership Board of Directors have been taking their message on the road.
“We do potluck events in every town and make presentations once a month with our collaborators Habitat for Humanity, The Connection Supportive Housing, and the Middlesex United Way,” Lauren says. “We talk about what is affordable housing, who lives in it, and what you can do to support it.”
They explain the demographics of the area to show why more affordable housing options are needed to serve those already here.
“In Old Saybrook, there are 10,200 residents and 4,400 households. Four hundred of those households receive food stamps, through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” Lauren says. “To qualify for SNAP, a family of three makes $36,624 per year. If they spent 30 percent of their income on housing, that would be $916 per month in an area where the fair market rent is about $1,200 per month.”
In addition to HOPE’s public presentations to service organizations, town land use boards, elected officials, church organizations, and others, a grant from Liberty Bank allowed HOPE to hire a media consultant to generate blog posts, press releases, and social media updates to help get out the message about the need for affordable housing and of HOPE’s plans to facilitate the effort.
“I get 20 calls a month from people looking for housing. We tell them to call 211, United Way’s Info Line for social services referrals. There are just not a lot of resources for those looking for affordable housing,” Lauren says.
Lauren cited the story of Santina Ragonese, a resident of Old Saybrook’s affordable Ferry Crossing development for which HOPE Partnership played the role of catalyst. Her story is one of several from the residents of Ferry Crossing that appear in a video called Faces of HOPE posted on the HOPE’s website at www.hope-ct.org.
“To see her tell her success story is inspiring. Santina now works full-time and also volunteers. She is thriving,” Lauren says. “Once you get a safe quality place to live, you can focus on getting everything else in place.”
And now Lauren and HOPE Partnership want to be the catalyst to help more shoreline residents like Ragonese find the affordable housing they so desperately need.
Through a grant from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national non-profit, HOPE hired an affordable housing consultant, Larry Kleutsch, who evaluated for HOPE the feasibility of developing each of the 20 properties on HOPE’s housing site list.
As a result of the consultant’s efforts, HOPE Partnership will announce in May two planned residential developments, one on seven acres in Old Lyme for between 18 and 21 units and another in Haddam that would convert a commercial property to housing.
“We will be joining with The Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development as our development partner as we move forward on these two developments. Our partners will have the capacity to coordinate financing and build a project team,” Lauren says.
Lauren says she is grateful for her hard-working and committed HOPE Board.
“Tony Lyons is our president and between him and Rob Cusano and our housing consultant Larry, they have given me the confidence to move forward with these new developments,” Lauren says. “I literally talk to five board members a week because they are an active, working volunteer board.”
In the planning stages for the middle of May is the annual HOPE Friendraiser, a free event for residents from shoreline towns and the lower Middlesex County area. The event includes light hors d’oeuvre, wine and beer.
“It’s a chance for use to share our mission and make new friends. We want to expand our advocates in the communities we serve and make sure that people understand that a lack of affordable housing affects everyone,” Lauren says. “I put a lot of passion into what I do with HOPE because I want it to succeed.”
For more information about the HOPE Partnership, visit www.hope-ct.org.