It is halfway through May, but with the close of this week, we have finally finished our Fair Housing Month activities.

While we didn’t have much notice to distill our months of planning in-person activities into the hurried weeks of building online platforms to host our workshops, our Fair Housing workshops felt more powerful and necessary in the context of what we are experiencing collectively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our silver lining is discovering what many organizations are learning- that moving our educational efforts online really allows us to broaden our reach, make our resources more equitably accessible, and broaden the scope of how people access Fair Housing policy.

Fair Housing Fridays

Our educational web-series, Fair Housing Fridays, saw a total of almost 90 participants. The topics included “State and Federal Housing Policy: What’s happening and how it affects you” with Erhard Mahnke from the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and Chris Donnelly from Champlain Housing Trust,  “Tenants’ Rights and Renting during COVID-19” with Erika Johnson of Vermont Legal Aid and Karin Ames of Vermont Tenants, “Fair Housing during (and in the wake of) COVID-19” with Melissa Horwitz of the Vermont Human Rights Commission and Ted Wimpey, Fair Housing Expert/Advocate. Recordings and resources from each webinar can be found by following the links. The webinars gave participants the opportunity to ask their housing questions directly to advocates, and the feedback we received indicates that it was a really valuable resource during an uncertain time with rapidly changing policy and information.

Young Writers Fair Housing Contest

One activity that remained on course was our new partnership with the Young Writers Project. Take the time to read our three stellar Fair Housing Contest winners.  Fortune is Hereditary by Gaia Lenox, 15 from Mount Mansfield Union High School  in Cambridge, VT
was our first place winner. For second place, House and Home was selected by Izzy O’Donnell, 14, from Hinesburg, VT. Under the Shelter of Sky by Emma Paris, 13, from Putney, VT received third place. We also have two honorable mentions for Teal Embrace by 16-year-old Audrey Sioeng and My House, My Home by 15-year-old Grace Kafferlin. We look forward to sharing these personal, emotive, and spell-binding pieces along with the other young writer submissions in the weeks to come. And because I can’t resist, here is an except from Fortune is Hereditary, the project winner.

“and misfortune is hereditary

because it never stops loving its
victims
and holds their hand, too afraid to let go.

Misfortune loves the vulnerable
like
fire loves kerosene

and they say home is where the heart is
but that is harder to believe
when your heart is in the freezing cold “

Partnership with T. W. Wood Gallery, Artist Reception and Workshops

After several years of collaborating with the Old North End Arts Center, and this year the T. W. Wood Gallery, it was a big shift to digitize art pieces and put them in a virtual shared space instead of a physical one. To maintain a sense of community among our participants, we put together and disseminated 75 art kits to community members  – including several affordable housing communities – in advance of our Fair Housing Month activities. Check out some of the community art submissions we have received here. We continue to receive community art submissions, so send your images to fhp@cvoeo.org to be added to our online gallery.

We partnered with Jen Berger from At The Root who lead an intimate, online zoom workshop using paint to explore what Fair Housing means in the context of the pandemic for our first online art workshop. As a group we discussed how “home” feels different during the Stay-At-Home order, and how we interact with our home spaces in new ways.

Our HeArt & Home Artist participants came together last week for our HeArt & Home Artist Reception to talk about their Fair Housing artworks. Their artwork, diverse in its visual language and means of representing the concepts of home, took on a new context within each artists’ experience of quarantining within their homes. Check out our full online gallery at fairhousingmonthvt.org.

Artists expressed remorse for not visiting family in home countries before travel bands were instated, extra anxiety around leaving their homes while following social distancing protocols, and a general  sense of gratitude for the opportunity to see one others’ faces, even if it was not in person. It is true the reception was not the wine and cheese event we envisioned to celebrate each persons’ excellent contribution to the show. But in many ways the online reception signified resilience and, for that reason, was that much more memorable.

At the conclusion of our reception, one artist participant asked, “What’s next?”

“What’s next?”

In the coming weeks, we will be taking a deeper dive into the artists’ work, sharing videos from our reception event along with images of their art which ranges from sculpture, to photograph, printmaking, installation, and painting. The Fair Housing Project will continue to share resources and insights about equitable housing, especially as it pertains to COVID-19. So if you, too, are asking what is next, then stay tuned to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for our latest updates and more ways to become involved. And of course, keep following us here at Thriving Communities.