Hannah Edwards, Community Outreach Coordinator with Habitat for Humanity of Key West and Lower Keys joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization’s projects.
Luckily, Habitat homes are built to withstand rough weather.
Edwards said, “We do build to the current standards for hurricane preparedness, and they all have hurricane windows and doors and everything else. When we build in the Lower Keys, they’re all elevated above the flood plain. So that does give us a little bit of peace of mind, but it’s still a little scary when one of those things comes through.”
There are four townhomes in Cudjoe Key that are almost ready.
Edwards said, “We’re nearing completion there, and we’ve had some awesome help from local businesses and individuals. We were over budget due to infrastructure, and so Charley Toppino & Sons came through and is donating P rock, so that’s really awesome for us. Then we had a couple individuals step up to donate some sod. So that’s really exciting, so that our homeowners will have a little bit of grass for their kids and their dogs and everything like that. So we’re very thankful for everybody in this community that that helps out with us.”
The mini golf tournament is an upcoming fundraiser for Habitat.
Edwards said, “We started this last year, and it was really fun. We do a mini golf tournament at Boondocks. So this year, it will be on November 17, and we encourage businesses to be a sponsor. You can be a hole sponsor, or we have various sponsorship levels, and you get to have a team of four to six players with your sponsorship and playing is really fun. We put together some prizes, and one of the prizes is for best team costume. So, we encourage silliness. It was great last year. We had a lot of teams come out. They all had a great time. It was just a fun low key event. They can go to our website, or they can give us a call. They can call me at 305-294-9006, extension one. Or they can email me. I would just encourage people to show up, because it’s going to be fun.”
Volunteers are always needed.
Edwards said, “We really do need volunteers. We had a team from FKAA out last weekend, and they were super helpful. They were helping us do those finishing touches on these four homes in Cudjoe. We are still working on painting underneath the homes and putting up lattice, and then we’re going to be landscaping. So we do have a lot of work that we still need to finish up. We welcome anybody that would like to turn up and help us, but please give us a call or go on the website and sign up, and then we can schedule the time for you to come out. I think we’re going to get the more folks from FKAA out there in a couple weeks. We’re going to invite them and see who’s available, because there was a lot of interest, and they did such a great job. So if you have a group that would like to come out, it’s a fun thing to do as a group. People always enjoy it. It’s fun to do a little hands on work and hang out with your team, and also with the new homeowners. You get to work alongside families that are working really hard to get their homes ready and it’s very gratifying.”
Habitat also helps with affordable housing.
Edwards said, “That sort of thing that we do is really behind the scenes, so nobody really sees it, but we do work together with the other Habitat affiliates in the Keys. There’s two other affiliates, one in the Middle Keys and one in the Upper Keys. We work with FIRM, Fair Insurance Rates in Monroe, and we work with our local legislators to try and get policies changed to benefit everybody and to remove obstacles that we come across in affordable housing. So we’ve been doing some good things lately. Right now, of course, insurance is the big, the big stumbling block that we’re working on. But there really is a lot out there, a lot of work to do to to get things optimized for affordable housing. The Live Local Act that passed a year and a half ago or so was really good for affordable rentals, but it didn’t really include much for affordable homeownership. So that’s another thing that we’re trying to work on now, is to get a little more at the state level for affordable homeownership, because we really believe that that is equally or more important than affordable rentals.”
Applications for homes are in process.
Edwards said, “We’re currently processing a whole lot of applications for our next five homes. So when these families get approved, we’ll have 13 families in progress towards homeownership. So we’ve been working super hard and we just are grateful for the support of the community.”
For more information, click here: https://www.habitatlowerkeys.org/