Bothands, Inc.

News

Forum on Housing for Mayor and Council Candidates

City Council and Mayor candidates will have an opportunity to share their views and opinions with the public at the BOTHANDS Candidate Forum Wednesday, April 28^th from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The forum will be held at St. Pius Catholic Church, located at the corner of Cedar Ave. and Fourth St.

Both Mayoral candidates and the majority of City Council candidates are expected to be in attendance and will be answering questions regarding workforce housing in our community and the City’s role in addressing this problem. Issues to be covered will likely include permanent affordability and Community Land Trust, as well as the role of the city in housing development. Members of the public will also have an opportunity to ask questions.

The event will be moderated by Daniel Kraker, KNAU Director of News and Programming. KNAU is a co-sponsor of the event.

The need for safe, decent and affordable workforce housing continues in Flagstaff despite recent reductions in the housing prices. Many working families in our community continue to be priced out of the housing market.

Foreclosure in Mohave & Yavapai

We are excited to announce we are now offering Foreclosure Prevention counseling in Mohave & Yavapai County. This program is made possible through the Attorney General's Office to assist Arizona homeowners facing foreclosure and at risk of losing their homes. Check out our Foreclosure Prevention page for program details.

Vickers Park Homes Sold!

We are excited to announce that the last two rehabilitated units at Vickers Park have been sold! We are thrilled to have helped two more families achieve their homeownership goals – they are wonderful additions to the great community that Vickers Park has become! Our first of the two new town homes is under contract – scheduled to close in the middle of April. If you or someone you know is interested in purchasing the last of these energy efficient homes – give us a call to schedule an appointment with a counselor!

Construction Manager Greg Pishkur Receives BPI Certification

AHC Homes Construction Manager, Greg Pishkur, has received his Building Analysts 1 Certification from the Building Performance Institute. This certification allows him to audit the energy efficiency of past and future construction projects, helping BOTHANDS provide more sustainable and environmentally conscious homeownership opportunities to low- and moderate-income families in Flagstaff.

Arizona Cardinals Support Sharon Manor!

For the fourth straight year, the Arizona Cardinals are helping to support the program at Sharon Manor. Their $4,000 gift will help pay for projects and programs that help the women and children process their experiences with violence and work towards healing, building healthy relationships and developing better communication skills. We truly appreciate the Cardinals' continued support and wish them luck in 2010!

National Bank of Arizona Supports Homebuyers Assistance Programs!

Our Homebuyer Assistance Program has also received funding from a long-time partner! National Bank of Arizona's gift of $5,000 will help BOTHANDS provide pre-purchase counseling and education to first-time home buyers. We are so grateful for their support - we couldn't provide these valuable services without it. We'd also like to thank National Bank for their volunteer support.

The Healing Power of Dance

Canyon Dance has generously offered their services to the children at Sharon Manor. Two dance instructors have begun teaching a dance class every Tuesday evening to supplement what the children are already learning in the Sharon Manor Children's Enrichment Program. Trauma, including experiencing domestic violence and abuse, leaves an imprint on both the mind and body and research demonstrates that effective treatment requires involvement of both. Because Dance Movement Therapy uses movement as the primary means of assessment and communication, the body is not merely addressed in therapy but actually given a voice. Memories that may be too difficult to express verbally can be shared through movement and dissociated feelings, previously unknown, can be identified as they arise in the body. Survivors can eventually regain a sense of control over confusing thoughts and feelings as they navigate their own bodily felt experience. Because of its active intervention methods, Dance Movement Therapy is often the treatment of choice for traumatized children whose brain development and nervous systems and externalized behaviors are altered by traumatic experiences. (Information provided by the American Dance Therapy Association.) Thank you Canyon Dance for helping our Sharon Manor Kids to heal!

Moving AHEAD!

We are happy to announce that BOTHANDS & Sharon Manor successfully helped our first AHEAD client move in to permanent housing. The AHEAD IDA Savings Program is a program that helps Sharon Manor residents create and implement a savings plan to cover move-in costs for when they leave Sharon Manor. The BOTHANDS program, along with partner National Bank of Arizona, is then able to match their savings 2 to 1 through a grant received through the Federal Home Loan Bank. The AHEAD program has helped clients set and reach goals, increasing self sufficiency.

Terry Goddard Announces More Free Help for Struggling Homeowners

Attorney General Terry Goddard announced last month that the State will provide a substantial increase in assistance for Arizona homeowners facing foreclosure as a result of a consumer fraud settlement with the Attorney General's Office.

Twelve nonprofit housing counseling entities in Arizona - including BOTHANDS - will receive a combined $1.3 million from a multi-state consumer fraud settlement last year with Bank of America (which acquired the defendant, Countrywide). The money will be used to hire additional staff and counselors to work with homeowners on foreclosure alternatives, as well as provide counseling help for consumers at risk of losing their homes.

BOTHANDS is excited to participate in the Attorney General's program and will soon expand foreclosure counseling services to Yavapai and Mohave counties.

Arizona continues to be at the center of the housing crisis, along with Florida, California and Nevada. About 6 percent of all housing units in Arizona received a foreclosure filing in 2009. National data released today show a record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure notices last year - a 21 percent increase over 2008. About 20 percent of all mortgages nationally are "under water" with negative equity; in Arizona, the estimate is 68 percent.

Free help is available to homeowners who have questions or need help working through their housing situation form the Arizona Foreclosure Prevention Helpline at 1-877-448-1211. Callers will be directed to local housing counseling agencies approved by HUD.

Thank you, Helen!

Nearly twenty years after helping establish The Affordable Housing Coalition, now known as BOTHANDS, Helen Hudgens Ferrell is ready to retire! We celebrated her and her career on January 27th with friends, family, colleagues, board members and staff at a party where speakers highlighted her successes, commended her efforts and shared their fondest memories of one of Flagstaff's hardest working women. Thank you, Helen, for all that you have done for Flagstaff! We will truly miss you!

Homebuyer Education Revised to include new RESPA Information

In order to ensure that our first time homebuyer clients have the most accurate and up-to-date information, we have recently revised our Homebuyer Education materials to cover the new Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, which impacts lender reporting requirements. Our new education materials will include a review of HUD's required new Good Faith Estimate forms as well as the new HUD-1 form used by the title company. BOTHANDS Homebuyer Education Classes are filled with tons of useful information and are a good resource for all potential homebuyers. Classes are offered monthly. If you or somebody you know would like to sign up please call our office at 214-7456.

New Team Members at Sharon Manor

Paul Langston is our new safety officer at Sharon Manor. He is a firefighter with Summit Fire Department and a former Flagstaff police officer. He is a wonderful fit to our team! Rachel Hamovitch has joined us as an Americorp volunteer for 2010. She will work as a Child Care Provider & Community Liaison while she studies Social Work at NAU. We are all very excited about our expanding family!

Holiday Spirit at Sharon Manor

The holidays are a wonderful time for families to get together and celebrate, and that is just what the women at Sharon Manor are planning this season. In addition to the annual community party - residents have planned potluck dinners, movie nights and seasonal celebrations to enjoy the holidays together. One resident is sharing her skills as a gift maker and will teach other residents how to make lip gloss, body scrub and bath salts to use as holiday gifts. It really is wonderful to see the Sharon Manor Community come together and share their talents and support each other at this special time of year.

We have received so much support from the greater Flagstaff community this year to prepare for the holiday party at Sharon Manor â€“ it was a daunting task this year because we currently have more women and children at Sharon Manor than we have had in recent years. We offer our most sincere thanks to Malapais Kiwanis, the PEO Group, the Democratic Womenâ€™s Group, NAU Criminal Justice Honor Society, Soroptimist International of the AZ Peaks and our Board & Staff for helping to create a joyful celebration in a peaceful atmosphere to inspire hope and faith in the future for each woman and child. THANK YOU ALL!

2009 YouthBuild Graduates

Tomorrow, 13 graduates will celebrate their accomplishments at the YouthBuild Graduation!

Here are some highlights on what some of them will be doing now: Tyler Rose, High Honors Graduate, has been hired by local green contractor Regroup and will also work part time with AHC homes to complete the town homes at Vickers Park. Joe Faggion, High Honors Graduate, has received a grant to attend NAU full time to complete a Master's Degree in Alternative Energy. Corey Williams, Honors Graduate, has been hired to work part time by two local contractors. Nate George, Honors Graduate, will continue his education at Coconino Community College in the Nursing Program. 2008 Graduates Benny Vargas and Ferdinand Benally worked this year as peer mentors for the 2009 class and have been hired to work for AHC homes to complete the town homes at Vickers Park.

We are so proud of all of the students - they have contributed to so many important projects this year, including installing 13 kitchens for the Flagstaff Housing Authority, helping to rehab the Community Room at Sharon Manor, completing two rehabs at Vickers Park, demolishing an old garage and re-purposing the materials to build storage sheds for BOTHANDS and Sharon Manor and breaking ground on the new town homes at Vickers Park.

Thank You NABA and HomCo!

Special thanks to the Northern Arizona Builders' Association and HomCo Ace for their contributions to the YouthBuild graduates! This year, NABA donated the proceeds from their golf tournament to BOTHANDS to benefit the YouthBuild participants. The funds will be used to purchase gift cards for the graduates to purchase the tools and supplies they'll need to be successful in the next stages of their careers. HomCo Ace has generously provided some matching dollars to NABA's $2,000 contribution, allowing us to award each graduate with a gift card!

YouthBuild Wins Excellence Award

YouthBuild was awarded the Excellence Award for Outstanding Work in Sustainable Development by the Coconino County Sustainability Program! About the award, YouthBuild Crew Instructor Ken Myers said, "It was a total surprise! It was really great to be recognized for our green efforts." Included in those green efforts are: making homes at Vickers Park more energy efficient, recycling materials from a deconstructed garage to build two storage sheds at other locations, and creating the Vickers Park town homes to be energy star rated and intermediate level energy efficiency on the Coconino County Sustainability scale.

BOTHANDS Land Trust News

BOTHANDS BOTHANDS is excited to announce that we have started a land trust to ensure the long-term affordability of homes in our community. The Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve the formation of a BOTHANDS Land Trust. The BOTHANDS Land Trust will be a program within BOTHANDS and can include land/homes both inside and outside City limits, including areas of the County. If you have any questions about BOTHANDS or how our Land Trust will operate, please call 214-7456.

Sharon Manor Residents Graduates NAU

Rachel is a resident at Sharon Manor and a 2009 graduate of the program. Since coming to Sharon Manor, her goal was to go back to school to study art therapy and provide a bright future for her daughter Alexis. We are proud to announce that through a lot of hard work, Rachel will be graduating from Northern Arizona University on December 11th with her Bachelors in Psychology. She will continue onto graduate school in the fall.

Structurally Insulated Panels at Vickers Park Town homes

This week, we received the delivery of our Structurally Insulated Panels - or, SIPs - which will replace traditional framing for the homes. SIPs are more than twice the R-value of conventional framing and will keep the homes more energy efficient by eliminating air-infiltration and having a prescriptive value of R-41. The panels are going up quickly and should be completed by the end of next week!

Devonna McLaughlin Named New Executive Director

The BOTHANDS Board of Directors made their selection of a successor to Helen Hudgens Ferrell who is retiring on January 31, 2010. Board President Scott Perelstein announced today that after a rigorous year long succession planning process and extensive national search Assistant Director Devonna McLaughlin has been chosen as the new Executive Director. "Devonna brings extensive knowledge of the agency and its programs, proven leadership in the community, and demonstrated initiative and collaboration," said Perelstein.

BOTHANDS Named one of National Bank of Arizona's top 25 Arizona non-profits

BOTHANDS is honored to be named by National Bank as one of its 25 nonprofit organizations to be honored as part of the bank's 25th anniversary. BOTHANDS is incredibly thankful National Bank and its employees for the commitment they have made to making our Flagstaff community a better place for us all and for the investment they have made in our efforts to help local families identify and maintain safe decent and affordable housing.

Special Thanks!

As the women at Sharon Manor gather around their Thanksgiving table, we are particularly thankful for the generous, continuous support of the Forest Highlands Foundation and the Flagstaff Community Foundation. This year, support for Sharon Manor came from these long term donors and from the 1701 Fund. Their support will provide case management services to homeless women and children survivors of domestic violence living at Sharon Manor.

Past Newsletters

We've gone to paperless news!

BOTHANDS mailed our last printed newsletter in Fall 2009 and on November 19th will launch the BOTHANDS Newsflash! The Newsflash will be sent out via email weekly or as news happens. No more waiting for a quarterly newsletter to learn about all of the exciting stuff happening at BOTHANDS! If you are already receiving our newsletter by email - you're automatically on the Newsflash mailing list. If you still receive the newsletter by mail and would like to be added to the mailing list - just let us know by email your address to Meg Patton at mpatton@bothands.org.