a cALL TO aCTION 

BHO was birthed out of the Housing Crisis as it began to devastating financial affects on our  Essential Workforce.  It turned essential workforce out on the streets.  Coupled with the crisis was and continues to be a major influx of affluent residents, rapidly increasing land prices and astronomical housing costs pushing working families out of the housing market.  These converging variables created at times an insurmountable barrier, forcing essential workers to look for housing long distances from their employment or not seek home ownership.  BHO answered the Call to Action:  We Need Affordable Housing. 

BHO’s goals were “simple”: raise awareness about the plight of the Workforce inability to obtain housing on their incomes, change perceptions about what is affordable housing, identify resources, educate decision makers and stakeholders as a means to affect change in the policies and production of Workforce Housing. 

The Housing Crisis thrust BHO into the role of Facilitator and Convener for Affordable Housing Issues.  In that role BHO instituted the series of Brunswick Affordable Housing Summits (BAHS) starting in 2007 and through 2008 as a strategy to achieve that not so simple goal.

The BAHS Series:  Four, two day Summits over 8 months.  Engaging over 400 engaging over 400 housing professionals, elected officials and the greater public to create an understanding and a pathway to change.  First step, Educate.  BAHS created roundatables in classrooms to educate housing professionals and local public on what is meant by affordable housing in rental, supportive and recovery housing and homeownership.  Next, we Equipped them with data, strategies, options, draft policies and real world examples of affordable housing plans.  In partnership with the NC Association of CDC’s produced the first Workforce Housing Study in the South Eastern US.  The Brunswick Workforce Housing Study (BWHS) was and is the cornerstone of affordable housing policy in many Eastern and Western NC rural communities. Then they were Empowered with the game changing tool, data.  The BAHS moved into the formation of the Brunswick Housing Coalition which continued to work with real world  examples from  government, national housing professionals, rural and urban planners and nonprofits and implemented usable plans and policies.  Lastly we Expanded those documented concepts into business models, town ordinances locally and modeled them for  coastal communities throughout Eastern and Western NC.   The BAHS Series  and the BWHS changed the  statewide perspective on housing.