Hannah Edwards, Community Outreach Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity of Key West and Lower Florida Keys, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about their projects.
One is a big event, the Annual Gala, on April 5, at the Truman Little White House.
Edwards said, “We like to keep our tropical theme going, because everybody seems to really enjoy that. It’s not terribly formal. You can dress it up or dress it down or dress it however you want. It’s a really fun event. It’s under the stars. We will have a delicious dinner, catered by Destination Catering. They do an amazing job. We are going to have some really great cocktails and inspiring program. I am trying to make a video about one of our families. Hopefully I will get that done in time. There will be games, auctions and dancing and lots more fun. We’ve already got some great sponsors that are supporting us. We have Southern Structures. They are one of the companies that builds for us. They build modular homes in Central Florida. They build them really strong, meet all of our codes for us. They do a great job. We also have the Key West United Methodist Church as a great sponsor, we have Historic Tours of America, Manley deBoer and some of our wonderful board members, are sponsors as well. We’ve got some great, great folks supporting us. So if you want to come, we will probably sell out. You can go to our website, you can click just to go to the event site and get your tickets. You can get a table, you can be a sponsor. So we really encourage everybody to that’s interested in Habitat that wants to be a supporter to check it out.”
Habitat also has a warehouse.
Edwards said, “We are doing our best with the space we have. We have a great employee who has taken over the management of it, her name Tamika Hunter, and anybody that wants to stop by she’s always there Tuesday mornings, nine to noon, that’s probably the best time to come by. Or if you would like to shop by appointment that’s also available. Her number is 305-849-1946. You can call her or text her and set up a time to come by and shop or if you have something to donate, you can text her pictures of the item. She’ll let you know. I know the warehouse is pretty full right now. So we’re probably going to be doing another big sale soon, which those are always good because she marks everything down to move it out of there and get new inventory In. We are looking for a nice, bigger space. So if anybody knows of a space, preferably in Key West, or Stock Island, that is fairly large, we would ideally like something in the 3,000 to 5000 square feet range. Most Restores are actually about 10,000 square feet, but we know that’s pretty hard to do down here. The Upper Keys has a Restore, and there’s is fairly small, I want to say it’s less than 1,500 square feet, and they do the best. They sell the highest per square footage of any Restore in the country. So we do what we can down here. We’ve got great people, great donors, great shoppers, and we’re ready to give the Upper Keys that run for their money if we can find a good spot. So everybody keep their eyes open, please let us know if you hear of a spot where we could turn into a real Restore. We’re working on it. It’s definitely one of our main goals for this year.”
There are a number of housing projects moving forward.
Edwards said, “We are in the final stages of selecting families for the four units that we’re building on Cudjoe. I have to say, we have so many qualified families, but it’s really, really, really going to be a hard decision. So hopefully, what we’re going to do, because we have the four we’re building on Cudjoe and then we have eight that we’re doing in Big Pine. So we’re hoping that some of these families that applied for Cudjoe will want to live in Big Pine, because we got it down to the last 22 families for four units. And they’re all really great. And it’s going to be really hard to figure out who gets these four units. The need is really huge, and the amount of people that are qualified and willing to be partners with us, just really excited about the program. It’s overwhelming, really. We want to just keep building as much as we can, so that all of these families have the opportunity for homeownership, because they’re so important. These are these are our teachers, these are our health care workers. These are our firefighters. They are our construction workers. They build this community. So we need to give them the opportunity to stay here. This is my first time doing the actual family selection piece and I’m just overwhelmed. I want all of these people to get a home. We are trying to come up with a name for these four units. So if anybody has a good name, it’s just four units in Cudjoe. Typically, we name our development, something landing. Moss Landing was our last one and we honored our late Executive Director Mark Moss, who is a very beloved community member with that name, but these four in Cudjoe I don’t know if a four unit development is a landing. So if you have a name that could be a landing or it could be something else. We’ve just been calling it Cudjoe Shoulders amongst ourselves, but we really need to come up with a real name. So anybody that has an idea, feel free to reach out, you can give us a call and call me at 305-304-7591. You can email me at [email protected] and submit your ideas.”
For more information, click here: https://www.habitatlowerkeys.org/