Valley Builds Community – Fall 2024 Update
Valley Builds Community
You can help Valley Community Development create affordable housing and provide the assistance local small businesses need to thrive by supporting our work today! We are the local housing developer who takes on projects others won’t, the nonprofit that deeply supports small businesses in all stages and provides understanding and care to first-time home buyers. We do this work with compassion, patience, and joy. We embrace that joy when buyers close on their very first home and send tearful messages of thanks to us, or when a new tenant moves into a thoughtfully designed cozy studio after living in their car. Your financial support of our work is critical to us as we tackle critical challenges in our community.
Small Business on Wheels!
When you support Valley, you are supporting community members launching their businesses.
David Tokgoz is a Turkish immigrant who attended our Small Business Fundamentals for non-native English speakers in collaboration with the International Language Institute. After completing the 6-week program, David worked one-on-one with Valley’s Small Business team. Together, we developed a business plan, financial projections, and completed a loan application so David could buy a food truck. Thankfully, David did not need our help figuring out the cooking part! David opened Only Kebab in Amherst in September 2024 and has built a thriving customer base.
Valley is grateful to our community partners up and down the Connecticut River Valley who work to ensure that local businesses thrive. We are in frequent conversation with municipalities, chambers of commerce, and other nonprofits that help small businesses. Your donation to Valley helps us continue to work with 250 local businesses each year, many of whom, like David, are just starting up.
Creating More Housing
“When will someone do something with that eyesore?” “Can’t someone turn that into housing?” “It has been vacant for so long, what is going to happen to it?” Maybe you are one of the people wondering WHAT was going to happen to the former, long abandoned, nursing home on Bridge Road in Northampton. Wonder no longer because…construction is underway on 60 new affordable apartments for families!
Getting this development funded was a doozy — Valley staff shook every tree to cobble together funding from MassHousing, the City of Northampton, the Office of Housing and Livable Communities, the Dept. of Energy, LISC, and others to make sure we could build an extremely energy-efficient, all-electric building that will be an amazing place for people to live.
We will use geothermal technology for heating and cooling, a massive solar array to offset electricity needs, and energy-efficient appliances throughout.
Wait, there’s more! We are halfway through construction of 20 apartments on Laurel St, also in Northampton. Keep an eye on our website for information about tenant lotteries for both.
It is a first for Valley to have two major projects underway at once – your support helps pay for the immense amount of staff work that goes into bringing all these affordable homes to our community!
Helping People Have a Place of Their Own
Did you know that your tax dollars, through the Community Preservation Act, have funded mortgage subsidies to make homeownership more affordable for first-time home buyers? We have partnered with Northampton, Amherst, and Easthampton for many years to provide financial education and counseling coupled with mortgage subsidies to help first-time, and often first-generation, community members buy their dream home. We have the absolute pleasure of working with a recent recipient of a Northampton subsidy:
“My son is autistic, and if we hadn’t gotten a house in Northampton, we would have had to change schools and try to find new friends, which would have had a bad impact on him. But now my son can stay at the same school as his friends. My dog Loulou is the happiest I have seen her; she has a big backyard to run around in. We had never even dreamed about having a home in Northampton if it wasn’t for Valley Community Development.” – Carlos, a first-time homebuyer client
We sometimes spend years working with clients before they are in a financial position to afford a home. You can help more people realize the dream of homeownership by making a donation to Valley today.
How You Can Help
Your donation helps your community by increasing access to affordable housing, helping small businesses thrive, and making the American dream a reality for people often historically excluded from homeownership.
Your financial support is vital! Your donation allows us the flexibility to seize opportunities to best serve our community. Gifts of any amount are important to us, but if you are able, please consider making a donation of $1,000 or more. As a certified CDC (Community Development Corporation), we benefit from the Community Investment Tax Credit program. Donors who make a gift of $1,000 and up receive a 50% tax credit (not a deduction – a credit) or a refund if you do not owe state taxes.
p.s. Interested in other ways to give? Please ask us about making a gift as part of your Required Mandatory Distribution or about including us in your estate plans!