I guess I am the old timer around here. I have been with Partners going on 14 years. I started out working one day a week keeping the books for Partners. We had 2.5 employees at the time. Fast forward 14 years and now we have almost 40 employees, 11 properties and 588 units and I work way more than one day a week. What a ride it has been. It has kind of been like raising my kids, which were little when I started. We have learned a lot along the way, had our ups and downs, and now we are almost ready to go off to college. We have to figure out what we want to be when we grow up. Do we keep providing a continuum of housing ranging from affordable housing to permanent supportive housing? Or do we focus solely on permanent supportive housing as the answer to homelessness?
We have been innovative in the way that we created our properties; always searching for new partners and different ways to produce safe, decent and affordable housing units. The supportive housing industry is constantly changing, or should I say the funding sources in the supportive housing industry are constantly changing and seem to be harder to come by. One thing that hasn’t changed at Partners: we all feel that it is everyone’s right to have safe, decent and affordable housing. Our challenge going forward is how to continue to provide this housing that we feel is so important to our community. We have been visiting other providers to learn different ways of accomplishing our goals, and are always interested in new ideas. I would love your feedback, ideas, comments or thoughts, so call me if you want to share.
