Happy Holidays! Winter Appeal 2021

Dear Friends,

2021 has been a year of transition, reflection, and progress for Columbia County Habitat for Humanity.

In March, Brenda Adams retired after 13 years as Executive Director. Her legacy will include how our Habitat operation grew to provide over 20 safe, secure, and affordable houses for families to call their own.

Our new Executive Director, Al Bellenchia, has brought a fresh perspective, new skills and experiences, and a desire to expand our impact in our community. During his first months, he has added to staff, streamlined and updated operations and helped move us past the lingering effects of Covid-19 and into a more active future.

We are moving forward in many ways:

• Our ReStore, under the guidance of new manager Will Stegemann, has grown steadily, regaining ground lost to the Pandemic. We are setting sales records, which provides more funding for building homes.
• We have entered partnerships with two families for our homes in Ancramdale and in the coming months will complete the sales of these innovative passive energy homes. The proceeds from these sales, as with all homes that we build, will be reinvested into more builds and renovations.
• Sales of our homes in Valatie and New Lebanon are also proceeding.
• We are beginning the preparations for our next build in the Village of Philmont and are committed to commencing that project in 2022. We are also finalizing the acquisition of another building site.
• We have created a new program, Habitat Helping Hands, to construct a partnership-based approach to serving the needs of home-owning working families. 
• Finally, we are committing ourselves to scale our ability to address the escalating affordable housing crisis in our community. The Board of Directors has approved a new framework for our future, our Vision 2025, which will guide our development over the next handful of years.

We need to do more: Housing affordability is at crisis levels in our county, the Hudson Valley region, and nationwide.

Affordable housing is essential to building vibrant communities. It is proven that:

• Housing affordability is both an economic and social issue
• Affordable housing creates stability in the workforce
• Affordable housing leads to better economic and health outcomes
• Homeownership builds community and a path out of poverty; it leads to better educational performance, lower levels of crime and greater civic engagement

If safe, affordable housing is scarce or unattainable, the businesses and institutions that serve our community cannot attract or retain employees. 

In an increasingly service-based economy, a lack of housing creates a cycle of economic distress. We are seeing that happen here, impacting local organizations large and small, in education, manufacturing, service, healthcare, non-profit sectors and other critical industries.

For many families, house prices, building costs and taxes have consistently increased, while incomes and access to credit have languished or declined. This has created an increasing gap between the cost of owning and maintaining a home and what is considered affordable. 

Columbia County Habitat is committed to doing more to help solve this growing crisis, and is seeking partners to create the change we need. “If you want to go fast, you go alone. But if you want to go far, you go together.”

Thank you for your generous past support. Your gift to Habitat is so critical at this time. Together, we can create more affordable homeownership opportunities.

There are many ways to give to our Winter Appeal, including here on our website. Our community’s future is increasingly at stake.

Wishing you and yours happy holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year,

Christian Kersten, President, Board of Directors

Al Bellenchia, Executive Director/CEO