Home Page Radio - HOME for Everyone

WPKN Community Radio

Thursday, September 23, 2021, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org Host: Duo Dickinson We all have to rest our heads somewhere. As universal as eating or sleeping, having a place is part of being human. But around New York City the cost of having a place to live is more than some can afford. A basic requirement to live, having a home, has to be met or people live in mortal danger. What is our common space – roads, parks, greens become places where people must live. Some people work to create places to live, even in a housing boom that raises prices and costs. The number of people who need safety where they live is always there, even when these costs go up – and right now they are. There are many scenarios of how the homes that should provide safety actually endanger who must live there. Those who are living on the street or in dangerous decaying homes simply need safe harbor. Those whose income is too small even the most modest market rate rental need assistance. Those whose income is too small to save a deposit and pay for a traditional mortgage are desperate to have a place that they own. On Home Page we present those who have “walked the talk” of making places for those who are not part of the crazy market rate housing booms and busts that flood places like Connecticut and New York. Bill Casey has been the Director of Habitat of Greater New Haven for almost 30 years, where that organization has created over 100 owned homes: mostly new, some rehabilitated, but all strategically located to build neighborhoods. Rose Noonan and others created the Housing Action Council in Westchester County, New York almost 40 years ago, and her intrepid group has helped create funding for hundreds of projects that house thousands of people – some formerly homeless, others with limited income, others in workforce housing that simply cannot afford to work near where they are needed to work. Steve Grathwohl has worked with a variety of organizations in Fairfield County, Connecticut as both a professional and a volunteer to re-envision blighted and deteriorating places that otherwise cannot justify private development and secure the vision and finding to make safe affordable homes. JOIN US!