Next steps in the Finding Our Way Home Housing Collaborative
The Finding Our Way Home Housing Collaborative launched in November as an opportunity to engage the entire community to find solutions to ease our local housing challenges. This series is hosted by Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley, recognizing complex community problems require collaborative problem solving. Habitat Vail Valley is excited to bring together a diverse group of community members, local decision makers and organization leaders to flex their collective problem solving abilities to positively impact the housing challenges in the Eagle River Valley.
Part three of Finding Our Way Home Housing Collaborative will take place Thursday, March 26 at Berry Creek Middle School. The past two sessions had robust attendance and lively conversation in brainstorming ways to get to the vision of “Eagle County is a place where everyone can live, work, and play now and for generations to come.”
This vision statement came from the first meeting where participants from diverse backgrounds gathered in small groups, told stories, and began to imagine the future of what would it look like if we’re successful being the kind of community we want to be, explains Bill Fulton from Civic Canopy, the organization.
This third meeting is about “Turning the Curve,” and how success will look going forward. “Our first meeting gave us the chance to lay the foundation for collaboration,” Bill says. “And then there was more texture to say, what would that look like? It would be a place where people can afford to live and work; that kind of life is attainable, and people stay here — they’re not forced to move because they can’t afford it.
“There’s a strong culture of collaboration and belonging from the public, private, and community sectors who are working together for the good of all,” he adds.
The second meeting focused on the obstacles to achieve the vision and the process of thinking about change — if it comes from changing people’s perceptions and mindsets or changing behavior or if it’s a question of culture or if it’s systems and structures.
“Instead of getting stuck in the either/ or or being pulled apart by which one we think is more important, we stipulate they’re all going to be essential as we do this work together. Because if you want to reach that vision of Eagle County being a place where everyone can live, work, and play now and for generations to come, we’re going to have to change mindsets, behaviors, culture, and systems and structures to get there. And when we ask, how would we know if we are making progress on those,” Bill says.
People brainstormed indicators of data that we could gather to give us a sense if we’re on the right track. “We’ll bring those indicators back into the third meeting, where we’ll do the turn the curve activity and launch action teams,” Bill explains.
This will be a hands-on activity to engage everyone in the room to figure out what the story is behind that data. Why aren’t we seeing what we want to do? And what are the root causes? What’s driving these patterns that we need to look at?
The goal is to not treat the symptoms but going into the deeper reasons the patterns exist. Together, we will brainstorm the strategies that might make a difference and evaluate those on how much effort they will take and how much impact they’ll have. This will give us the basis for action teams.
If you go:
Thursday, March 26 at Berry Creek Middle School
RSVP – elyse@habitatvailvalley.org or here.
Free dinner at 5 p.m.
Program and discussion 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Live translation & childcare available.
The fourth and final meeting- Organizing for Action will take place June 24,, where our community housing map will be unveiled.
