In the southwestern corner of the state, three housing organizations have joined forces to form Cornerstone Housing Partners with the goal of covering “all things home for especially lower income Vermonters,” said Mary Cohen, the group’s executive director.
Cornerstone Housing Partners was formed last year when NeighborWorks of Western Vermont and the Housing Trust of Rutland County united under one moniker, said Cohen. The Bennington County-based Shires Housing is the most recent organization to join the fold earlier this month.
The three organizations are keeping their individual legal organizational titles for now to sustain access to federal funding, but Cohen said the groups are “for all intents and purposes
merged organizations” operating under the umbrella of Cornerstone Housing Partners.
Shires Housing and the Housing Trust of Rutland County both were regional organizations with kindred missions, focused on real estate and in particular multi-family housing development, managing around 400 housing units, Cohen said.
NeighborWorks of Western Vermont functioned as a financial support organization for homeowners across Southwestern Vermont with a connection to the resources of the larger national affiliate of Neighborworks of America.
The partnership between the three entities allows them to pool resources to help house Vermonters and support them with accessing resources as a renter or homeowner once they have obtained housing, she said.
“There’s just a lot of synergies between our organizations,” Cohen said.
Melanie Paskevich, chief program officer of Cornerstone Housing Partners and previous interim director of NeighborWorks of Western Vermont, said that NeighborWorks programming offers low-income renters and homeowners energy efficiency improvements, home repair, loans, financial homeowner education and other services.
When NeighborWorks of Western Vermont formed in 1986, it was focused on working in four towns in Rutland county, but eventually expanded to form a presence in all of Rutland, Bennington and Addison counties. Paskevich said combining efforts with Shires Housing will offer more opportunity to expand their “collaborative work and to make more impact” in Bennington County.
Noting Vermont’s rate of homelessness ranks fourth in the nation, Paskevich emphasized the importance of building more affordable housing and offering financial resources for low-income Vermonters. She said NeighborWorks programs that offer landlords grants to set up units to rehouse people exiting homelessness are a complement to the Housing Trust and Shires Housing projects.
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Cohen said the Housing Trust has an affordable housing development called Lincoln Place that has 19 units, 10 of which are designated for permanent affordable housing for those who previously experienced homelessness. Shires Housing has worked with Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless to set up nine apartments at Norton House to provide the unhoused transitional housing, she added.
While different models, both housing developments are geared toward helping people exiting homelessness, a mission that will be continued under Cornerstone, Cohen said.
Cohen’s immediate goals for Cornerstone are to rehab the affordable apartments called the Arlington Village Center and create a homeownership center in Bennington County, along with continuing to develop the Housing Trust’s three affordable housing projects in the Rutland area.
Another pending Cornerstone development project will rehabilitate and preserve the Cora B. Whitney building in the town of Bennington and the Conant Square building in Brandon. Both are designated as housing for senior, disabled residents, said Cohen.
The biggest challenges to the merger between the three organizations have been integrating systems and merging cultures to form a new leadership board, said Cohen. Cornerstone’s new board structure, set in the bylaws, ensures equal representation of the regions the group works with, said Paskevich.
“We need to make sure that our board represents the communities we serve,” said Paskevich. “We need that input from the communities that we’re serving.”
Ed Woods, the Bennington Select Board’s vice-chair, said people in Bennington and the county often feel overlooked by the rest of the state. He is grateful the organizational structure has a third of the board representing Bennington county, giving the region “a voice at the table.”
Echoing this sentiment, Bennington Select Board Chair Jeannie Jenkins added that Shires Housing is one of the last affordable housing organizations in Vermont that had yet to join a larger entity.
“The value of the merger with Rutland Housing Trust and NeighborWorks is that we will have a home ownership program,” said Jenkins. “We will be able to leverage more grants and loans because the organization size is larger.”
In bringing Bennington County into the fold through the new partnership with Shires Housing, Cornerstone is looking to become the “one-stop shop” for addressing housing access concerns, Paskevich said.
“It’s bringing all those different housing needs and funding sources together under one roof to really be a comprehensive housing organization,” said Paskevich.
Read the story on VTDigger here: New group aims to create “one-stop shop” for housing in southwestern Vermont.