Howard: A year of building homes and hope
December brings mixed emotions for me — I love that the kids are out of school and hopefully the snow is plentiful — but it’s a hard time of year for so many, especially those who don’t have a safe, stable living situation.
This year I feel like we — as a community and at Habitat Vail Valley — have a lot to celebrate. We’ve “Doubled Our Impact,” building 46 homeownership opportunities over three years. That means we have teachers, law enforcement officers, behavioral health counselors, health care and construction workers, resort employees who can celebrate the holidays in a home of their own.
Every day, like many of our partners, we focus on community. We’re excited more people, organizations, nonprofits and entities are talking about how to help fix the housing crisis. Three years ago, we sat down to imagine what could be done if we worked together. After many conversations, we put a plan into action and settled in to do the work of building strong foundations for future dreams: to build affordable homeownership opportunities.
Homeownership is the answer to so many of the questions. If we want to retain community, we need affordable homeownership. If we want to retain a quality workforce and have young families build a life here, we need affordable homeownership. Almost every Habitat homeowner, without a Habitat home, was very close to leaving the Eagle River Valley. They never gave up hope but their reality looked bleak. We’re thrilled to be a builder of hope and home.
Twenty-four new homeowners moved into homes they helped build and then purchase in 2024. In total, since 2022, 46 families are home. I am proud that we made an $18 million-plus investment in the affordable housing infrastructure in our community. We were able to leverage our grants, donations and other income into something greater for our community.
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We didn’t do it alone. While we were working to double our impact, our legislators were developing policies to increase housing supply in Colorado homeownership. Funding often follows policy and great policy gains were made in our state over the past few years. Much legislation has passed that has had an impact on more urban areas of the state and we’re working to increase funding in the critical rural areas like Eagle County.
Recently we were part of the Rural Housing Summit — an example of collaboration at work where we brought together legislators, community members and policy experts to start the conversation around what will help our rural areas retain community, knowing it’s different for each area.
All this says to us that while we know there is a need for affordable housing, so do leaders across the nation. Generous support came from you — our partners in the community. We are so grateful for the community support, the neighbors supporting each other and the new homeowners who are building a stronger community.
I hope you have a holiday season where you share laughter and love with your people. We’re ready for a robust 2025 and invite you to join us as we celebrate homeownership.
Elyse Howard is the vice president of philanthropy and community affairs at Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley. Learn more about Habitat and how to get involved.
