Working In Neighborhood’s eight-year collaboration with the College Hill Housing Team continues to make remarkable progress! As part of WIN’s mission to empower people to improve their lives and their neighborhoods, the College Hill project has targeted the Cedar Avenue corridor for housing development that includes both new and rehabilitated construction.
1549 Ambrose Avenue
Nine homes have been completed and sold to first-time homebuyers. The most recent Cedar Ave. rehab was just sold this October, and one on Ambrose Ave. is currently for sale. Both of these two-bedroom rehabbed homes feature original hardwood floors, energy-efficient systems and appliances and are available to buyers who meet certain income qualifications.
Several additional units are in the predevelopment process, including one new construction. Hope Wilson, Director of WIN’s Housing
Quad Parishes Volunteers
Development, notes that this home in particular, will provide an alternative and complement with the 2014 Citirama project, also in College Hill.
Construction financing for these projects has come from PNC Bank, Cincinnati Development Fund, College Hill Presbyterian Endowment Fund and the Seton Enablement Fund. Grant funding has come from the City of Cincinnati. The CDC Association has provided some operating support. In addition, WIN has received generous support from private donors.
These homes can be offered below cost to buyers of modest incomes because of the many generous volunteers who have donated well over 1000 hours demolishing garages and porches, doing yard work, repairing fences and retaining walls, painting and many other jobs. These volunteers have come from groups such as the LaSalle High School Foorball Team, Xavier University students, the Quad Parish Group in Wisconsin, the Catholic Heart Work Camp, and Crossroads Community Church as well as from the Fifth/Third Bank, Proctor and Gamble and General Electric.
Among the recent buyers of WIN homes in College Hill are a married couple with three young children, a single mother with school-age twins, a couple from the neighborhood who needed to bring their mother to live with them, and a family with a teenage son who have already made more improvements to their new home.