Important-St. John Housing Meeting This Saturday

THIS SATURDAY! Important meeting about Affordable Housing and Formation of a Community Development Corporation for St. John, 10:30 am to Noon, Conference Room A in the St. John Community Center

Dear St. John Neighborhood Association Members and Friends,

Last Spring, students at the LBJ Public Policy program at UT helped us hold a forum on Affordable Housing for St. John. At that meeting, we learned about things other neighborhoods have done in east Austin to keep their communities affordable for all residents. Since that time time, we have been learning more and pursuing opportunities in this area as a neighborhood association.

At the last neighborhood association meeting, we voted to proceed with the formation of a Community Development Corporation (CDC) for the St. John neighborhood. This will be a non-profit organization that will work to help provide more affordable housing, both rental and ownership, in our community. Several other east Austin neighborhoods in Austin have CDC's that have been able, over a period of years, successfully keep some level of affordable housing in their community.

The reason for us to do this now is that the City of Austin has offered help in remodeling a house that is city-owned but presently unoccupied in our community. They would like to help us transform this house into an affordable property and get it back into the community's hands. However, for this to happen, we must have a non-profit CDC to receive the property and remodeling assistance.

This Saturday morning, we will have a meeting open to the whole community from 10:30 am to noon to learn more about the CDC. We also will be discussing the formation of two boards: one the working board for the non-profit and one a larger advisory board. Both boards are open to anyone in the community who has an interest in keeping St. John affordable to all residents.
For those who can't come to the meeting this Saturday, there will be more opportunities to learn about the CDC and how to participate on one of the boards. We will have information at the next joint St. Jonn/Coronado Hills neighborhood planning meeting on March 31 and at the April St. John Neighborhood Association meeting on April 7. At the April 7 meeting, we will select people to serve on both boards for the upcoming year.

Please let others who might be interested know about this opportunity to help our community. Also, feel free to write or call with any questions.

Thanks! I hope to see you Saturday.

Sincerely,
Allen Weeks
St. John Neighborhood Association President
512-653-4935
What: Meeting about Affordable Housing and Formation of a Community Development Corporation for St. John
When: 10:30 am to noon, Saturday, March 21
Where: Conference Room A, St. John Community Center
Questions?: Call 653-4935