Nov. 11 Chili Cook-off Fundraiser – Geauga County Housing Coalition

Geauga County Housing Coalition logoYou are invited! Please join us for our 4th annual fundraiser November 11, Veterans Day from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The fundraiser is at the Metzenbaum Center, 8200 Cedar Road in Chesterland, Ohio. Only $10 per ticket for chili and all the fixings!

Door Prizes • Silent Auction • Chinese Auction

A portion of the proceeds will benefit homeless and at-risk veterans in Geauga. Don’t miss it; space is limited! Get your tickets NOW. Call 440-285-2282 or email the organizers by November 7.

Spread the word with this flyer!

Video: Ohio Community Development – If We Can, So Can You

Community development corporations have been active in Ohio since the 1960s and were established to address the needs of underserved communities. CDCs exist because local heroes like you give their time, talent and care.

Video: Ohio Community Development – If We Can, So Can You

Community development corporations have been active in Ohio since the 1960s and were established to address the needs of underserved communities. CDCs exist because local heroes like you give their time, talent and care.

WRCDC Applying to State for Senior Housing

WRCDC and the NRP Group will be submitting a joint application to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) for funding to build a 50 unit senior apartment community in the City of Painesville.  If successful, the project will be built in the Diamond Shamrock Planned Unit Development off of Diamond Center Drive adjacent to Cobblestone Court Apartments and Gander Mountain in 2014.  To see an image of the proposed development go to  http://www.shamrocksenior.com/.

WRCDC Receives HOME Funds to build new home

Lake County commissioners have approved an agreement to allow Western Reserve Community Development Corp. to build a new home on previously vacant property in Painesville.

A new single-family home with a basement would be built at 107 Prospect Ave. near the Asper Commons subdivision also constructed by the group, said Jason Boyd, Lake County Planning Commission director and federal grants administrator.

The proposal would cost $160,000 and money to pay for the project comes from the Home Investment Partnership Program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Typically, the use of these federal funds are used to acquire blighted property to be rehabilitated and then sold, Commissioner Robert E. Aufuldish said Thursday during the commissioners’ meeting.

“Instead of doing that, we’ll put up a new home,” he said.

Sabrina Waytes is executive director for Western Reserve Development Corporation, a private nonprofit company based in Painesville.

She said the project would dovetail on the success of the agency’s Asper Commons project.

That development features seven homes that were available to lease with an option to purchase at the end of the program.

Day of Service with Auburn Career Center

A handful of Auburn Career Center students will one day be able to visit a new subdivision in the city of Painesville and know that the hard work they did in May will impact the lives of people living there for years to come.

Despite having the wettest spring on record, the students in Dave Richards’ Landscape Horticulture class planted hedges and shade trees, put in lawns and created a picnic area in three acres of green space for Asper Commons, a new subdivision being built by Western Reserve Community Development Corporation.

WRCDC Names New Executive Director

Sabrina Waytes was born and raised in Painesville, and relished the chance to recently become Western Reserve Community Development Corp.’s new executive director.

The nonprofit private company based in Painesville has two primary missions — to construct new homes and to rehabilitate and repair others.

Waytes has more than 15 years of experience in banking and financial services, mostly community development.

She formerly was a real estate asset manager of affordable housing developments in Ohio and throughout the South. During that time, Waytes noticed that many of the developments that were built needed a nicer touch.

When she was laid off from that job and because of a strong desire to build better housing, she decided to become an interior design student at Cuyahoga Community College. She spent the last three years there until accepting the job with WRCD in February.