Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Tej Bahadur Gurung of Laprak, Gorkha, is planning to replace the doors and windows of his new house that was handed over to him by the Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA). It will cost him at least Rs 15,000 to replace the UPVC doors and windows, he estimates. UPVC, also known as Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride, is a low-maintenance building material used as a substitute for wood.

Tej Bahadur is not the only one planning to replace the doors and windows of the houses built by the NRNA for the survivors of the 2015 earthquake at Gupsipakha. Most of the families are busy removing the UPVC doors and windows of their houses these days. But they are also worried about the expenses of installing new wooden doors and windows.

The construction of the houses is complete. But we need to replace the doors and windows since they are very weak, said Chamsing Gurung. The houses are there but the major work on the interiors is yet to be done. We have to bear the expenses of the replacement and we dont know how we will be able to afford it.

The NRNA has built an integrated settlement for 573 earthquake-affected families at Gupsipakha but the most of the beneficiaries are yet to move into their new houses.

Only 16 families of the total 573 have shifted to their new homes.

Basanta Gurung said they were worried about the structural integrity of the new houses.

Its not just the doors and windows, even the zinc sheet roofs look weak. We are not planning to replace the roof now since we dont have the money, said Gurung.

Technicians also admit using substandard materials while installing doors and windows for the houses which the authorities had touted as a model integrated settlement.

UPVC panels have been used to make the doors and windows. Such materials are not solid, said Ramsharan Acharya, chief at the district project implementation unit of the National Reconstruction Authority.

The local people have accused the NRNA of using shoddy materials while constructing the integrated settlement.

The NRNA representatives showed us some fine quality of zinc sheets, doors and windows before the construction. The materials shown at that time have been used only in four/five houses, said Ganesh Gurung, whose family has been living in a temporary hut since the earthquake. I am planning to shift to the new house only after replacing the doors and windows.

Ganesh said that the NRNA representatives were in a hurry to hand over the houses without completing the works. According to him, the construction of around 150 toilets is yet to be completed.

The NRNA started constructing the settlement in November 2016 after signing an agreement with the National Reconstruction Authority. The original plan was to complete the project within eight months.

Four years have passed since the project started, and it is still incomplete.

The NRNA has claimed that the project got delayed due to difficult terrain, harsh weather conditions and poor road condition, which hindered the smooth transportation of construction materials.

The site is about 30 minutes walk from the settlement of Laprak, which was severely ravaged in the earthquake and deemed uninhabitable by geologists.

Besides building 573 homes with running water and solar-powered electricity facilities, the NRNA had also announced plans to build a school, a health post and a Gurung museum at the settlement that is spread over 18 hectares of land.

Raj Gurung, the chairman of Dharche Rural Municipality Ward No. 4, said while there was some truth to the NRNAs claim about difficult topography and adverse weather conditions delaying the project, the lack of coordination among the authorities involved in the project had also led to the delay.

The local unit, National Reconstruction Authority and NRNA are all responsible for the delay. Coordination among them was clearly lacking, he said.

The NRNA has said that it was aware of the concerns raised by the earthquake survivors.

We have received complaints from the locals regarding the quality of doors and windows of their new homes. We are studying the issue, Naresh Rana, the executive director of NRNA Secretariat, said.

View post:
Quake survivors say houses handed over by NRNA have weak doors and windows - The Kathmandu Post

One of the previous owners of the historic Nemours Estate constructed a pediatric hospital "in her literal backyard," but over time the relationship between the two institutions withered. Now, staff at the museum are attempting to rebuild it, with an educational mission focused primarily on hospital patients.

Personal stories are how we, at Nemours Estate, connect our visitors with the duPont family who once lived in this grand place. So Id like to share my personal story of building a museum education program from the ground up, to illustrate why I have felt the need to create not just another education department, but a new model altogether focused on weaving health and heritage together.

After studying and working throughout Delaware for yearsfocusing on early childhood education research, psychology, history, and museum volunteeringI moved to London with my husband in 2015 to earn my masters degree and make the career jump into the museum field. London (as many already know) can make any museum professional feel like a kid in a candy shop. I was lucky enough to work for two of its excellent institutions: the Charles Dickens Museum, as a volunteer docent, and The Geffrye Museum of the Home, in the Learning & Curatorial department.

It was the Geffrye Museum which opened my eyes to how a museum can function in practice as a well-integrated community asset. Hoxton, the Geffryes neighborhood, was severely lacking in green space and embroiled in a tense tug-of-war over gentrification. The museum responded by providing free half-term educational activities for children, engaging youth in programming, and leading regular neighborhood programs for people in the community who were blind, deaf, lonely, older, and had learning disabilities. The museum was a facilitator of community conversations and also welcomed neighbors to picnic on its front lawn or explore the historic gardens, free of charge. (If youre not already familiar with it, please check out The Geffrye Museum here.) This greatly inspired the next phase of my career.

Formerly known as Nemours Mansion and Gardens, Nemours Estate was once hidden to most of the general public, including the childrens hospital on its campus. It had been the home of Alfred I. duPont and his family, who lived at Nemours for sixty years, from 1910 until 1970. Upon his death, Mr. duPont left his fortune to establish the Nemours Foundation, which would build a pediatric hospital and eventually evolve into a broader healthcare system. Decades later, everyone in Delaware knew about Nemours/Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children, but almost no one realized Jessie Ball duPont, Alfreds widow, had constructed the pediatric hospital in her literal backyard. Since her death, leadership at the estate had drifted away from a relationship with the hospital. Visiting the house was a restrictive experience which did not allow children. And so, the mansion and gardens were all but hidden away for years.

When I was hired to be a historic interpreter at Nemours Estate, a few months after jumping back across the pond, it just so happened that I was joining during a pivotal shift in leadership, philosophy, and culture. Gone now were the guided tours and restricted access policies that previously barred young children from visiting. The fence that separated the hospital and estate was no longer seen as a barrier. New leadership literally opened it up, installing a walking gate for patient and employee access. Our new Executive Director encouraged patient families to visit free of charge, calling the estate a place to engage with mind, body, and spirit.

Then, in 2018, I was hired to pilot a brand-new role: Community Education and Museum Coordinator. Since the estate now allowed children (finally!), we were in the unique position of creating an educational program from the ground up that engaged with a non-traditional audience of children and families in a meaningful way. It has been an amazing experience (with terrific support from Nemours Estate staff) to strategize and build a learning program from scratch. Here it was, fallen right into my lap: the chance to design a new, dynamic model of integration between heritage and health care. I felt like I had won the lottery.

Although we are beginning to host on-site learning programs for the general public, our physical location next to a pediatric hospital is practically begging us to think beyond the typical museum education model. So deciding that our primary learning audience would be the children served by Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children felt very natural. For one thing, schoolchildren in the area have plenty of traditional field trip options in the many historic homes, public gardens, and museums that surround Nemours Estate in the beautiful Brandywine Valley. The people who do not have as many options are the patients and families right next door to us.

One important factor that helps to make this choice possible is our uncommon funding structure. We are extremely fortunate to be able to rely on an endowment for our operations, which allows us to have a single-minded focus on mission- and vision-driven activities. While this special situation can be an amazing opportunity to do social good, it can also come with unexpected downsides. Part of the reason we are so late to the educational programming party in the first place is that Nemours Estate has never been challenged to look for programmatic funding or to compete for audiences.

As you may imagine, bringing history and horticulture to the hospital and welcoming patient families to the estate requires a bit more preparation than a visit to your local library or school. As such, I have spent the better part of two years meeting hospital associates, learning what needs Nemours Estate may be able to assist with, and defining the scope of our programmatic work.

I work mostly with the hospitals Department of Child Life, which is a fantastic place to start for any museum looking to get more involved with a pediatric hospital. Through this partnership, the team at Nemours Estate has started to bring patients everything from one-hundred-year-old gingerbread recipes to clocks and carrier pigeons, through a series of pilot programs that dovetail with hospital camps, holiday programming, and regular activities. In 2019 I established our first hospital-handling collection and the corresponding infection prevention protocols. I have also helped to create standalone programs for a Cerebral Palsy group, the Palliative Care Team, and the Nemours Child Development Center, among others.

The focus for this type of program development is on a carefully tailored experience that best meets the specific needs of the small group. We design on-site programming by looking through a lens of potential patient and sibling needs. While we welcome and encourage the general public to participate as well, we always incorporate accessibility and sensitivity to appointment times into planning.

Thanks to the tireless work of the Horticulture team at Nemours Estate, we have also found ways to bring horticulture and nature to patients and associates. Ken Darsney, Manager of Gardens and Grounds, also started his job in the midst of the administrative transition, and soon got to work collaborating with several hospital departments to create a vegetable container garden in the outpatient section of the hospital. Named The Can Grow Garden, it was part of an initiative that distributed over six thousand vegetable plants in 2019 to Nemours families to encourage healthy eating and growing produce at home. Thomas Ratay, Garden Specialist, helped me to bring kindergarteners from the Nemours Child Development Center and a cerebral palsy group to the woodlands and gardens to experience nearby nature. The horticultural team also helps me to film videos about the estates woodlands, ponds, and gardens, which bring the outdoors indoors for the children.

Prioritizing a non-traditional audience has tested many of our assumptions about museum practice. Shortly before the onset of COVID-19, for instance, we were able to install our first in-hospital exhibition, Plates of the Estate, just outside a twenty-four-bed unit. The cases embedded into the hallways were not museum-standard, not an ideal height, and were not temperature- or light-controlled in any way. We chose porcelain as a stable material to test conditions in the non-museum grade cases, but also because the duPonts enjoyed using colorful plates featuring animalsfun for all ages. Across the hospitals atrium, we helped the Delaware Museum of Natural History install an equally exciting exhibit about rocks, minerals, and shells.

Another shift, especially this year, has been into virtual programming that is either streamed directly to a patients bedside screen or used by the Hospital School program for supplementary material. Virtual programming, familiar to all of us now, has always been important for this audience. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many inpatients were immunocompromised and unable to leave their rooms. Some children are not healthy enough for visitors or do not have the physical ability to hold objects at any time. While virtual learning does not allow for the same kind of tangible encounters with history that I have become passionate about in my academic and work experience, it is sometimes the only outlet they have.

Finally, as a museum professional, the staff and organizational structure at a hospital was not something I was at all familiar with. Working with departments such as Child Life, Volunteer Services, Telecom Support, Interior Design, and the ever-important Infection Prevention is a steep hill to climb, but the view from the top is worth it. I realize that if it is a learning curve for me, a Nemours Associate, it is likely that other museum professionals have run into obstacles climbing this hill as well. In addition to finding out who to talk to, there are many other nuances and best practices that require a degree of experience.

Knowing there were other museums in the US with health care experience, I wanted to find them to compare notes.So, in July 2020 I posed a simple question on AAMs Museum Junction forum: was there anyone out there who would like to discuss this topic? The flood of positive responses was beyond every expectation. Today, our casual discussion group has close to one hundred members and is still growing. We are in the process of splitting into working groups and discussing more focused topics, like working directly with patients, working with medical professionals and students, well-being & mindfulness, research, and horticultural projects. Group members range from seasoned researchers and experts to those who are simply interested in learning more. (If you would like to join these discussions, please send me an email!)

For me, the most beautiful thing about working with the hospital is access to a more diverse audience than would ever typically enter a museum. If we, as a field, can help our communities when they are truly in need of diversion, peace, self-exploration, or friendly faces, it only helps to chip away at the figurative wall that sometimes stands between us and non-museum-goers.

Hospital patients are often waiting. They may be waiting for an appointment, waiting for a procedure, or waiting to feel well enough to go home. My hope is to fill just a small fraction of that waiting time with something enjoyable, something that may lead to self-discovery, or family bonding time.

I focus on developing programs that encourage mindfulness, exposure to nature, and a discovery of personal interests. I want children to have immersive experiences that improve their mental and emotional well-being and expose them to interesting things in an informal environment. Them learning the facts is less important to me than the lesson that museums and gardens are places to renew and have fun.

When I was a child, one of my classmates was battling cancer. She would come to school when she could, and one day when she was in class, I noticed her beautiful, long fingernails. I complimented her, amazed that she could keep them for so long. Her response: Growing them out is my hobby in the hospital. It gives me something to do. What we have in museums and cultural organizations is worth sharing with people who need distraction the most. No matter the degree in which we engage with this audience, there will be sincere appreciation.

We all know that museums are for everyone. To really be for a hospital population, we need to meet them where they are, even if that means creating something new. This is a lesson that applies to all of the many communities we as museums serveespecially in times like these.

Editors Note: See AAMs Museums, Health, and Wellness Compendium for more examples of museums contributing to health care.

Annie Thomas-Bubel is the Community Education & Museum Coordinator at Nemours Estate. Annie works to create inclusive museum learning and well-being programs for audiences at both Nemours Estate and the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, with whom we share a campus and a legacy. Annie is fascinated with the intersections of museums and well-being and strives to build bridges between arts/culture and healthcare initiatives.

Read more from the original source:
Why I Abandoned the Traditional Museum Education Model - aam-us.org

Atlanta, Georgia Tanya Washington remembers moving into Peoplestown, a predominantly working-class and historically Black neighbourhood about two miles southeast of Atlantas downtown, a decade ago.

Across the street from her home was an old Black church, which residents say was at least half a century old. I moved in on a Saturday, recalls the law professor at Georgia State University, who is originally from Washington, DC.

She is sitting in the living room of her 100-year-old home, where she lives with her husband and two children, aged four and 18. A television plays muted footage of Black Lives Matter protests in the city; book-lined shelves add cosiness to the room decorated with framed family portraits on the blue walls.

On Sunday morning when I woke up, I heard the sounds of old spirituals like my grandmother used to sing in her choir when I would visit her in South Georgia, the 50-year-old recalls.

I was thinking What is going on? I thought maybe the Lord was calling me home; maybe I died and didnt even realise it.

Tanya Washingtons 100-year-old home [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]She chuckles at this memory of a neighbourhood that quickly became her home. It was a beautiful church. I thought how incredible it was that I got to wake up and listen to this every Sunday morning.

But the scene she describes bears no resemblance to the cookie-cutter suburban houses that now sit across the street, where the old church once stood. The songs that spilled into Washingtons bedroom with the sunshine each Sunday morning have been replaced with silence.

About two years ago, the churchs owners sold the building to private realtors, who, driven by the citys development plans, have targeted Peoplestown over the past few years. The pews were moved out onto the lawn, from where they were sold, one by one.

Washington watched as the church was demolished and residential homes were built in its place. It was not an unusual sight in a neighbourhood where at least every other home has been sold off, renovated or demolished and replaced with a larger, more expensive house.

The newcomers trickling into Peoplestown to settle in these properties are more affluent, and often whiter, than the mostly working-class residents who lived in the neighbourhood for many decades.

The noises are different. The people are different. The whole environment of the neighbourhood is completely different now, Washington says.

New houses where the old church once stood [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]It is a process of gentrification that has already transformed the city of Atlanta and major cities across the US intertwining with unresolved racial injustices built into the countrys foundations and resulting in mass displacement of low-income and Black residents.

Peoplestown is one of the last historically Black neighbourhoods to be targeted for gentrification in Atlanta, which has one of highest rates of income inequality in the US and was the fourth-fastest gentrifying city in the country between 2000 and 2014. But while it arrived later than in other parts of the city, when gentrification came, it came with force.

In 1974, Atlanta became the first major southern city to elect an African American mayor, and every mayor since has been African American. The city celebrates itself as home to scores of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis. Its numerous Black-owned businesses and its strong Black middle and upper class have earned the city the title of Americas Black Mecca.

But this carefully constructed image clashes sharply with the bright red signs staked into the lawns on Washingtons block, where just four homes remain where once at least two dozen had stood.

Mayor Bottoms, stop displacing Black families, one of the signs reads, referring to Atlantas current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Stop predatory use of eminent domain, is printed onto another.

Signs in the front garden of one of the homes still standing on the block [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]In 2012, a series of storms resulted in severe flooding on Washingtons block, as runoff rainwater overwhelmed a combined water and sewage system built beneath it and caused a major overspill. At least six homes were damaged.

The city covered the costs of cleaning and repairing the damaged homes, at least one of which was flooded with several inches of sewage, as the citys failure to upgrade the system had caused the overspills. But residents say the city did not finish all the repairs and in response several residents sued.

About a year later, in 2013, the city offered to buy the damaged homes as part of a settlement with the families and in order to construct a pond on the location of the overspill to mitigate flooding in the neighbourhood. The city allegedly told the residents that if they did not accept the citys offer, they would end up receiving far less in the future and warned them the city was planning to eventually take the whole block of homes anyway.

While a few of the families settled with the city at this time and parted with their homes, most opted to refuse the citys offers and stay. In 2014, however, the city approved the use of eminent domain which allows the government to expropriate private property for public use to construct a pond and park at the site. In 2015, the other families on the block received letters from the city informing them it would need to acquire their properties.

The green area where more than two dozen homes once stood and where the city is planning to construct a pond and park [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]In place of their homes, it planned to develop a $65m green infrastructure project that is expected to include a Japanese garden, gazebos, several retention ponds and bioretention areas to treat stormwater.

The decision altered the lives of the families on the block, most of whom buckled under the threat of the citys eminent domain ordinance and gave up their homes. Residents who settled with the city were made to sign non-disclosure agreements banning them from sharing the amount they had agreed on with other residents.

There is still no pond or park in Peoplestown, but the planned project has already transformed the neighbourhood. Washingtons and just three other homes remain; all the others have been demolished and replaced by open green space.

It just didnt feel right, Washington reflects. My house was never damaged from the flooding. How do you go from wanting to buy a few homes to suddenly needing to take an entire block?

She suspected the city was abusing eminent domain to drive private investment in the neighbourhood so, along with a handful of other residents, she decided to challenge it.

What followed offered them an insight, they say, into the institutional racism and alleged corruption that has shaped Atlantas gentrification.

Decades of discrimination, racial injustice, and systematic neglect of low-income and Black neighbourhoods may have sealed the fate of Peoplestown long before the 2012 flood, but the residents of these four homes are determined to stay put.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s when Black Americans challenged the system of segregation commonly known as Jim Crow that was designed to limit their rights after centuries of slavery was accompanied by a process of white flight from the inner cities.

It was no different for Atlanta, even as, from the 1950s on, it referred to itself as the city that was too busy to hate and local leaders worked to build an image of the city as one of economic prosperity and racial progress.

Tanya Washington outside her house [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]According to Kevin Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University who wrote a book on the white flight from Atlanta during desegregation in the 1950s and 60s, when African Americans were permitted to expand from the congested neighbourhoods they had been consigned to into formerly all-white parts of the city, they were threatened by white supremacists and their homes were bombed. But when terror campaigns and pleas to public officials failed, white residents packed up, sold their homes and deserted the city entirely.

By the 1970s, white people, with the help of government homeowner schemes that were denied to African Americans, had abandoned the inner cities en masse and established communities in the suburbs, with the aim of maintaining all-white neighbourhoods.

Since the countrys inception, wealth disparities have been shaped by racial injustices and discrimination. In 2016, the net worth of a typical white family was nearly 10 times greater than that of a Black family, according to the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank. So when white people left the inner cities, capital quickly followed.

Giant figures sculpted on Stone Mountain, Atlanta, Georgia, show Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America with Confederate Generals Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson [File: Fox Photos/Getty Images]Tea Troutman, an urban development researcher and Atlanta-based community organiser, tells Al Jazeera that as capital moved to the suburbs, industries and jobs that working-class city residents were dependent on followed suit. While it was predominantly white people leaving the cities, affluent flight also added to the capital drain, as higher-income Black and brown residents also left, Troutman says.

Deindustrialisation happened at the same time as capital flight, turning cities into these destitute spaces, Troutman explains.

Austerity policies were then rolled out in the latter part of the 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s when former US President Ronald Reagan slashed federal aid to cities; this resulted in dramatic cutbacks to social programmes that scores of already marginalised communities relied on and exacerbated social and economic issues in the cities.

One of the new houses built in the neighbourhood [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]Over the past several decades, cities have attempted to attract outside investment to transform urban neglect and decay into development and renewal by luring wealthier and predominantly white people to return to the inner cities in order to increase the citys tax base especially in the form of sales and property taxes, which are major sources of revenue for local governments.

But as has become clear to some residents of Peoplestown, urban development and economic progress often begets displacement, dispossession, and increased violence for Black and low-income city residents.

Peoplestowns residents are all too familiar with the unjust patterns of urban development.

When city officials wanted to link downtown Atlanta to the expanding white suburbs in the 1950s, three major interstates were constructed in Peoplestown, Summerhill and Mechanicsville, ripping through the heart of these long-established communities and separating the sister neighbourhoods from each other.

In 1957, the city conceived of another urban renewal plan and bought up about 600 acres of land in portions of Summerhill, Mechanicsville, and Peoplestown, removing thousands of Black residents and closing more than 100 Black-owned businesses in order to make room for housing, businesses, schools and parks that would attract middle-income largely white families.

According to Larry Keating, a professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech Research Institute, the project was designed to also create a buffer between the low-income Black neighbourhoods and the central business district in one of many attempts to keep Atlantas downtown a desirable location for middle-class white people by expelling Black residents from the area.

The Atlanta Stadium in 1966 [File: Fox Photos/Getty Images]The project, however, never came to fruition and the massive lot of land stood vacant until 1964 when Ivan Allen Jr, Atlantas mayor at the time, decided to build a stadium, now the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Keating says the plan was likely envisaged to thwart community proposals to use the land for building public housing for low-income Black residents.

The trumpets of urban renewal and economic growth once again reverberated through the city while more Black residents saw their homes demolished for extra parking spaces around the stadium.

In 1966, the body of Harold Prather, an unarmed Black man, collapsed along with the homes, after a white police officer shot and killed the 25-year-old in Summerhill. Prather was stopped on a traffic violation and informed of an open warrant for his arrest. The young man ran from the police, who responded by shooting him in the hip and side.

Frustrations in the neighbourhood, which was settled in 1865 by formerly enslaved African Americans, had reached their boiling point and days-long protests and rioting erupted. When Mayor Allen attempted to pacify the protests by standing atop a police patrol car and speaking to the angry crowd through a megaphone, he was met with bricks, stones and bottles. The crowd drowned out his pleas for law and order by chanting Black power! White devil!

Mourners waiting for Dr Martin Luther Kings funeral cortege to pass outside Moorhouse College in Atlanta, Georgia on April 9, 1968 [File: Keystone/Getty Images]This process was replayed in cities across the United States. James Baldwin, the celebrated writer and activist, put it bluntly in 1963: Urban renewal means negro removal.

Following the same trend, in the 1990s, as Atlanta prepared to host the Olympic Games, the city once again took to bulldozers and demolished its public housing. Atlanta was the first American city to introduce public housing in 1935 and by 2011 it was also the first to have demolished all of it.

When the renewal plans for Atlantas dilapidated public housing were introduced, the low-income Black residents were promised affordable housing units in the new mixed-income apartments that were to be built on top of the rubble of their former homes.

But stringent screening processes, which barred low-income residents from returning if someone in their household had a criminal record or they did not have full employment, made it so very few displaced residents were permitted to return. Others received Section 8 vouchers, which subsidise costs in the private housing market; but which also limit the areas recipients can live in depending on which landlords accept the vouchers.

Many former public housing residents who were not eligible to return were made homeless. According to Troutman, some parts of Atlanta where public housing once stood are now gentrified and are the most expensive parts of the city, while other areas still remain completely vacant since the housing was demolished.

Atlantas Olympic Stadium is shown under construction in 1995 [File: John Bazemore/AP Photo]In the years leading up to the Olympics in 1996, city leaders once again loudly touted economic progress and marketed Atlanta as the cradle of the civil rights movement, while promising enormous benefits for the community. At the same time, roughly 30,000 low-income residents were evicted or displaced from the city.

The city moved to clean the streets of anything that contradicted the glossy spectacle of an up-and-coming international hub that Atlantas leaders intended to portray to the world. Thousands of homeless people, most of them African American, were unlawfully arrested and thrown into the newly built Atlanta City Detention Center, where their poverty would not distract from the citys newly polished image.

The city allocated more land for the construction of the Centennial Olympic Stadium, located adjacent to the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, adding more displaced Black residents to the thousands who were expelled decades earlier. Peoplestown once again felt the heavy burden of Atlantas development.

According to Haythem Shata, an Atlanta-based civil engineer, the area where the Olympic Stadium now called Turner Field was to be built was plagued by historic flooding, documented from at least the 1950s, as the location was the site of a stream through which a large amount of run-off drainage passed.

The city, therefore, constructed two culverts, or channels, from the two major interstates to redirect the run-off water into a junction box located underneath Peoplestowns now-contested block to divert flooding from around the Olympic Stadium, says Bill Eisenhauer, an Atlanta-based engineer and analyst from the Metropolitan Atlanta Urban Watershed Institute.

The junction box was already the site where at least 145 kilometres (90 miles) of combined sewer lines join, before releasing into a large trunk line that runs partly down Atlanta Avenue, where Washingtons home is located, and into a combined sewer overflow basin and eventually into a wastewater treatment plant.

According to Eisenhauer and residents who lived in the neighbourhood at the time, before constructing the culverts to reroute the streams to Peoplestown, the Georgia Department of Transportation had assured the communities that a relief trunk line would be constructed from the junction box in Peoplestown, through Grant Park a wealthier and predominantly white community located about two miles from Peoplestown, and into the nearby combined sewer overflow basin in order to relieve the pressure on the combined sewer and water system in Peoplestown.

But the relief trunk was never built. They [the city] thought it was better to disrupt the lives of the poor and Black neighbourhood rather than the wealthy and white neighbourhood, says Columbus Ward, a prominent neighbourhood advocate and longtime resident of Peoplestown.

Despite the dramatic increase of water flow into the junction box, the city did not build additional stormwater storage capacity upstream from Peoplestown or add the relief trunk, Eisenhauer explains, causing the system to get overwhelmed during storms the pressure of which results in the lids of the junction box and manholes popping off and sewage spilling out into the neighbourhood.

Since Peoplestown sits on a low basin, the more the city was built up after the Olympics, the more Peoplestown was inundated with stormwater runoffs from the concrete that smothers the ground of the city. We have all of this development happening around us, but we still have that same stormwater sewage system that was not made to accommodate this much growth, Washington explains. So we end up with floodings.

After the 2012 flooding in Peoplestown, Kasim Reed, Atlantas mayor at the time, had hired a national consulting firm to estimate the cost of constructing the relief trunk line, according to Eisenhauer. But nothing came of it, likely because the construction of the trunk line would be too costly, Eisenhauer says.

According to residents, the city also fails to adequately clean the drains, which has compounded the problem. The city has created a problem and then they use that problem to further gentrification and displace us from our homes, Washington says.

A large cement lid, where the junction box is located and the source of the overspills, is perched atop the expansive grass stretching across Washingtons block, and sits in the backyard of Bertha and Robert Darden, an elderly couple who have lived in Peoplestown for three decades. Their quaint brick house is adjacent to Washingtons on the other end of the Atlanta Avenue stretch of the block.

Robert and Bertha Darden in front of their home [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]I knew right when I saw this house that this was the one; this was where I was going to raise my children and build a family, Robert, 70, tells Al Jazeera. His living room is blanketed in a patchwork of framed photographs of his children and grandchildren; it feels like walking inside a family photo album.

The neighbourhood wasnt as safe back then as it is now. But it had everything that I needed, adds Robert, who had worked as an engineer for the city for decades. His home is also located walking distance from the Greater Christ Temple Holiness Church, where he has attended service since 1975 and where he met and fell in love with Bertha.

Their home was one of the houses damaged in the flooding in 2012. Sixty-five-year-old Bertha immediately feared that forcible displacement might follow.

The Dardens, along with the rest of Peoplestown, have watched as neighbourhoods around them have transformed over the last decade and a half; each following the same trend: Black and low-income residents pushed out while wealthier and mostly white residents replaced them.

In 2005, the BeltLine was conceived and exacerbated this cycle of gentrification that was already on a runaway train, Troutman tells Al Jazeera. The multibillion-dollar megaproject will ultimately connect 45 neighbourhoods to a 22-mile (35-km) loop of multi-use trails, parks and eventual street cars that follow abandoned railroad tracks that loop around the perimeter and throughout the core of Atlanta.

A section of old rail tracks is preserved next to the Atlanta BeltLine as the midtown skyline stands in the background [File: David Goldman/AP Photo]The BeltLine, which is expected to be completed in 2030, is touted as a project to improve transportation, establish green spaces and promote development and has become a major driver of gentrification in Atlanta.

The canopies of trees along the BeltLine shade the winding trails that slither through parks, upscale residential neighbourhoods and commercial areas lined with craft breweries, restaurants, and luxury apartments; city residents can bike to work or around the city on the trail. The project has painted a picturesque and charming image for the young and affluent professionals the city wants to attract.

But it has brought another wave of displacement for surrounding low-income and largely Black communities, triggering sharp increases in home values pushing out low-income renters who cannot afford the jump in rent and homeowners who cannot afford the increased property taxes.

Old Fourth Ward, considered the ground zero of the BeltLines development, was an historic Black neighbourhood in the heart of Atlanta with a rich and vibrant history; it is the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the home of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as pastor up until his assassination in 1968.

The neighbourhood, which is situated along the eastside trail, is now used as a precautionary tale for other Black neighbourhoods bracing for the hardships that follow in the BeltLines path.

While Old Fourth Ward was neglected for decades, nowadays large multi-storey homes, townhomes and condos are built alongside old shotgun houses, while some of the citys most popular restaurants and bars are located in the area. Street art is splashed around the neighbourhood, with a mural of George Floyd painted onto the side of a building and, just down the street, another building has Black Futures Matter: End Mass Incarceration etched across its length.

Like other neighbourhoods around the BeltLine, the Black population in Old Fourth Ward has steadily declined, while the white population continues to increase. In 2000, 76 percent of the 12,444 residents in the neighbourhood were Black and just 16 percent were white.

In 2015, however, the population had increased to 14,321 people, but the Black population had shrunk to 49.5 percent and the white population rose to 39 percent. Over the same period, median household income had more than doubled, from $19,614 to $42,627.

A pedestrian walks along the BeltLine, a transportation project being built within the old rail corridor which will eventually connect 45 neighbourhoods with public use trails and a light rail line, in Atlanta [File: David Goldman/AP Photo]Along the Southwest segment of the BeltLine, which the city broke ground on earlier this year, surrounding neighbourhoods, which includes Mechanicsville, saw median sale prices jump 68 percent between 2011 and 2015. Peoplestown is also located on the south end of the BeltLine.

According to Troutman, the housing market collapse in 2008 added gasoline to the fire that was already ripping through Atlanta. The city, which has a strong legacy of Black homeownership, was hit hard. About a quarter of a million residents lost their homes to foreclosures and many others were targeted by private investors who swooped in to take advantage of the crisis.

You saw a lot of people being approached to sell their homes around this time, recalls Ward, the neighbourhood advocate. And this was when a lot of people were vulnerable to selling their homes because they could no longer afford them.

We also saw a lot of city code enforcers coming around at this time, he adds. They would tell people who already couldnt afford their taxes and bills that they had to paint their houses or install a new roof. It almost seemed like everyone was just coming together for the sole purpose of kicking people out the neighbourhood.

But nothing prepared Peoplestowns residents for the drastic changes that were about to take place.

Many of the residents of the contested block in Peoplestown had initially vowed to stick together and fight the city, Bertha says. But after 2015, residents buckled, one by one, settled with the city and moved out.

A lot of the residents in Peoplestown are senior citizens, Bertha, an evangelist minister, explains. They didnt have the energy or the resources to fight the city and they gave up and left.

It was really hard for us, she continues. You would leave in the morning and a house would be there, and then youd come back in the afternoon and the same house would be demolished into rubble.

Robert and Bertha Darden with their family in front of their home [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]The rest of the neighbourhood, meanwhile, was aggressively pressured by private realtors to sell their homes, the prices of which are expected to dramatically jump in value after the construction of the pond and park. Residents continue to receive phone calls several times a week, regular emails and even real estate postcards that display pictures of their own houses, urging them to sell.

Youre being targeted in this predatory process, and at the same time the neighbourhood is changing around you, says Troutman, who has worked with the community in Peoplestown. Theres something that weighs on your soul and spirit when you look up and everything you loved about your community has dried up whether its the people you knew for years who are being displaced or the places you frequented that made the community a home for you.

But overwhelmingly its the pressures of being poor and the pressures of being trapped in an undervalued and underserved community that lead people to sell their homes, Troutman adds. Private realtors will then flip the properties, selling them for sometimes double or triple the amount, residents say.

According to Robert, families in Atlanta are experiencing intergenerational displacement, and some of the residents who have recently been displaced from Peoplestown had settled into the community after gentrification pushed them out of Old Fourth Ward.

Robert and Bertha Darden with their family in front of their home [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]Bertha and Robert knew they had to make a decision to pack up and leave or stay and fight. They had no reason to believe they would have a chance at winning and challenging the city would inevitably cause financial and mental hardships during what were supposed to be their golden years.

We didnt have the answer so we turned to God, Bertha says.

They prayed for direction. God spoke to my heart one night and told me to stand still, Bertha says; she did not know that Robert had prayed and received the same answer that night.

The next morning Robert came to me and held my hands and told me: Were in a fight and in order to win we got to stay in the fight. We need to stand still, Bertha recalls. I was shocked. God had spoken to us and we were told clearly not to move.

The Bible verse that convinced Robert and Bertha to stand still [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]Bertha pauses from her story to grab a Bible from her living room table; she sifts through the pages until she finds the scripture that she and Robert had both read. Smacking her finger onto the page, she reads out loud: And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore Criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.

This scripture is from the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament and describes the ancient Israelites deliverance from centuries of enslavement in Egypt.

God told us to stand still. So why would I ever consider selling my house now? Robert says. He speaks in a low, matter-of-fact tone. I dont care how much money they offer, Im not selling. My father is already rich in houses and land. Thousands upon thousands of hills belong to Him. Their money means nothing to me.

The decision to stay and fight the city has not been easy for the Dardens. In 2016, the city sued the residents and condemned three of the homes. The perpetual anxiety of possibly being evicted and having their most cherished possession taken from them at any moment has weighed heavily on the couple.

Its been eight years of this now. Its been up and down, Bertha says. But God comforts us through this, even though we have moments that make us want to lie down and cry.

Robert and Bertha Dardens home [Lynsey Weatherspoon/Al Jazeera]The Dardens and Washington tell Al Jazeera the city has also systematically harassed them since they refused to leave the block. In a repeat of what Ward described during the Great Recession, city code inspectors targeted the Dardens home. After being visited by code inspectors several times, Robert posted an officially stamped letter confirming their house had already passed a city code inspection onto the front door in the hope of warding off future inspectors.

The city also sent a company to both the houses to shut their gas off to prepare for demolitions. We all just happened to be home that day. But imagine if we werent? Bertha says, incredulous. They didnt send us a letter or call us to warn us that this company is coming over to turn our gas off so our home can be demolished.

See the article here:
The Black residents fighting Atlanta to stay in their homes - Al Jazeera English

The Manufactured Homes market study now available with Market Study Report, LLC, is a collation of valuable insights related to market size, market share, profitability margin, growth dynamics and regional proliferation of this business vertical. The study further includes a detailed analysis pertaining to key challenges, growth opportunities and application segments of the Manufactured Homes market.

This research study on the Manufactured Homes market is an apt exhibit of this industry sphere. It includes a detailed analysis of this vertical as well as substantial information on this business space, with regards to pivotal aspects such as the current revenue, profits projections, the latest market tendencies, market size, market share, and various other deliverables, over the forecast period.

Request a sample Report of Manufactured Homes Market at:https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/2759252?utm_source=marketsizeforecasters.com&utm_medium=SK

A brief overview of the performance of the Manufactured Homes market during the forecast timeframe has been provided. Information about the driving factors affecting the Manufactured Homes market outlook has been delivered, in conjunction with the growth rate that this business space is expected to register over the expected duration. Also, the Manufactured Homes market study delivers a detailed notion of the numerous challenges prevailing in this business space. Also, an in-depth understanding of the growth opportunities existing in this vertical is delivered in the study.

Main pointers presented in the Manufactured Homes market report:

Unveiling the Manufactured Homes market with respect to the geographical terrain:

Manufactured Homes Market Segmentation: USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East Asia

Information given in the market report with regards to the major industry indicators:

A comprehensive gist of the Manufactured Homes market with regards to the product and application spectrums:

Product landscape:

Product types:

Key insights delivered in the report:

Application spectrum:

Application segmentation:

Specifics given in the report:

Ask for Discount on Manufactured Homes Market Report at:https://www.marketstudyreport.com/check-for-discount/2759252?utm_source=marketsizeforecasters.com&utm_medium=SK

Other major pointers included in the report:

Some details about the competitive terrain of the Manufactured Homes market include:

Vendor base of the industry:

Competitive analysis pointers mentioned in the report include:

The Manufactured Homes market analysis also speaks on important details pertaining to parameters such as market concentration ratio.

For More Details On this Report: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-manufactured-homes-market-growth-2020-2025

Related Reports:

1. Global Water Heating Radiant Ceiling Panels Market Growth 2020-2025Read More: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-water-heating-radiant-ceiling-panels-market-growth-2020-2025

2. Global Multiple Strand Roller Chain Drives Market Growth 2020-2025Read More: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-multiple-strand-roller-chain-drives-market-growth-2020-2025

Related Report : https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/data-exfiltration-market-rising-at-63-cagr-to-cross-usd-61070-million-by-2025-2020-12-02

Contact Us:Corporate Sales,Market Study Report LLCPhone: 1-302-273-0910Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150 Email: [emailprotected]

Read more:
Comprehensive Analysis on Manufactured Homes Market based on types and applicati - News.MarketSizeForecasters.com

Daniel Schemer| Correspondent

MIDDLEBORO The Select Board, acting as the Board of Health, is currently dealing with a recurring issue of occupants in seasonal housing communities not leaving when they are supposed to.

The issue was first brought up at the November 16 meeting regarding the Woods Pond homes, specifically 28 homes along Kings Way. The area is essentially a campground and many of these cottage-style units in this part of Woods Pond are restricted to seasonal use from April 16 October 10.

The permit of occupancy does not allow habitation in these homes past the season.

This is not about someone not paying rent. Its about someone staying someplace not licensed for this length of occupancy. This is a danger, said Select Board Chair Leilani Dalpe at the November 23 meeting, where more details on the case came out.

As explained by Dalpe, the public water system for these campgrounds consists mostly of communal wells. The wells arent designed for year-round use and equipment for maintaining these wells shuts off at the end of the season.

Its not just a town permit thing. There are health reasons for that. It needs to rest during the off season to provide potable water, said Dalpe.

According to the Board, the limited licensing, both with the town and the states Department of Environmental Protections (DEP), is confirmed by the Woods Pond Condo Association.

The folks who own the association acknowledge this, said Dalpe.

Further digging conducted by the Board revealed this to be an issue stretching back at least several years. Available online materials for the November 16 meeting show email correspondence between the Health Department and the Woods Pond Condo Association confirming the issue of tenants squatting in the homes off season is a recurring issue.

I cant use my deck because of my home being covered with wood smoke. This has been going on for years, said Mike Lefoley, one of year-long residents of Woods Pond, who also expressed concern for his wifes underlying lung issues with regards to the neighbors burning wood for heat all through winter.

Lefoley also brought up recent failed test results of the nearest septic system to his property, which is in close proximity to his well water source.

If my well was 50 feet away from a cesspool, I wouldnt be drinking that water, said Neil Rosenthal, Select Board member, who advised Lefoley to improve his filtration system and seek testing of his well for nitrates.

The Board confirmed that the towns Health Officer will be going door-to-door to the 28 confirmed seasonal homes along Kings Way to find out who doesnt belong.

This whole ordeal has forced the Select Board, at the behest of Interim Health Officer Bridget Sweet, to take a closer look at the licensing process for many of these housing communities, whether seasonal, mobile, or manufactured homes.

At the November 30 Select Board meeting the Board voted that the Board of Health remain the permitting authority for seasonal housing developments, as well as manufactured housing communities.

See the original post here:
Select Board addressing problem of seasonal occupants staying year round - SouthCoastToday.com

HHS Secretary Alex Azar speaks at the 2020 Forbes virtual Healthcare Summit

At the 2020 Forbes Healthcare Summit, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said that the government is facilitating the production of a massive number of doses of several Covid-19 vaccines each week in anticipation of FDA emergency authorization. Were producing more vaccines literally every single week, he told moderator Avik Roy, President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and Policy Editor at Forbes.

ADVERTISEMENT

On Tuesday, an advisory board for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that frontline healthcare workers and residents and staff in nursing homes should be the first populations to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. While distribution will ultimately be left up to the states to decide, it is expected that state governments will follow these recommendations to prioritize these hard-hit populations. Over 100,000 residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died due to Covid-19, which often presents more severe symptoms in the elderly.

Azar says that by mid-December, the government could already have 6 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTechs mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, enough for about 3 million people. If last months request for emergency use authorization is approved, he says that theoretically the residents of all nursing homes in the country could receive vaccinations within one week of approval. If Modernas mRNA vaccine is also approved, that would mean even more doses.

And if youre not in a nursing home facility or working directly with Covid-19 patients, the vaccines could still come sooner than predicted. Progressively more and more populations, throughout the country will get vaccinated, Azar says. Vaccinations will ramp up in the months of January, February and March. Millions of new doses of the vaccine will continue to be produced each week. By the spring of next year, he says, we will have enough vaccines for every American who wants it.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

Continued here:
HHS Secretary Azar: Millions Of Covid-19 Vaccines Are Being Manufactured Each Week - Forbes

Verified Market Research have recently published a new report on the global Manufactured Housing market. The study provides profound insights into updated market events and market trends. This, in turn, helps one in better comprehending the market factors, and strongly they influence the market. Also, the sections related to regions, players, dynamics, and strategies are segmented and sub-segmented to simplify the actual conditions of the industry.

The study is updated with the impacts of the coronavirus and the future analysis of the industrys trends. This is done to ensure that the resultant predictions are most accurate and genuinely calculated. The pandemic has affected all industries, and this report evaluates its impact on the global market.

Global Manufactured Housing Market is growing at a faster pace with substantial growth rates over the last few years and is estimated that the market will grow significantly in the forecasted period i.e. 2019 to 2026.

The report also emphasizes the initiatives undertaken by the companies operating in the market including product innovation, product launches, and technological development to help their organization offer more effective products in the market. It also studies notable business events, including corporate deals, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, partnerships, product launches, and brand promotions.

Leading Manufactured Housing manufacturers/companies operating at both regional and global levels:

The report also inspects the financial standing of the leading companies, which includes gross profit, revenue generation, sales volume, sales revenue, manufacturing cost, individual growth rate, and other financial ratios.

Dominant participants of the market analyzed based on:

The competitors are segmented into the size of their individual enterprise, buyers, products, raw material usage, consumer base, etc. Additionally, the raw material chain and the supply chain are described to make the user aware of the prevailing costs in the market. Lastly, their strategies and approaches are elucidated for better comprehension. In short, the market research report classifies the competitive spectrum of this global Manufactured Housing industry in elaborate detail.

Key highlights of the report:

Market revenue splits by most promising business segments by type, by application, and any other business segment if applicable within the scope of the global Manufactured Housing market report. The country break-up will help you determine trends and opportunities. The prominent players are examined, and their strategies analyzed.

Manufactured Housing Market, By Type

Mobile Homes Modular Homes Pre-cut Homes

Manufactured Housing Market, By End User

Residential Commercial

This Manufactured Housing report umbrellas vital elements such as market trends, share, size, and aspects that facilitate the growth of the companies operating in the market to help readers implement profitable strategies to boost the growth of their business. This report also analyses the expansion, market size, key segments, market share, application, key drivers, and restraints.

Insights into the Manufactured Housing market scenario:

Moreover, the report studies the competitive landscape that this industry offers to new entrants. Therefore, it gives a supreme edge to the user over the other competitors in the form of reliable speculations of the market. The key developments in the industry are shown with respect to the current scenario and the approaching advancements. The market report consists of prime information, which could be an efficient read such as investment return analysis, trends analysis, investment feasibility analysis and recommendations for growth.

The data in this report presented is thorough, reliable, and the result of extensive research, both primary and secondary. Moreover, the global Manufactured Housing market report presents the production, and import and export forecast by type, application, and region from 2020 to 2027.

Customization of the Report:

Verified Market Research also provides customization options to tailor the reports as per client requirements. This report can be personalized to cater to your research needs. Feel free to get in touch with our sales team, who will ensure that you get a report as per your needs.

Thank you for reading this article. You can also get chapter-wise sections or region-wise report coverage for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.

To summarize, the global Manufactured Housing market report studies the contemporary market to forecast the growth prospects, challenges, opportunities, risks, threats, and the trends observed in the market that can either propel or curtail the growth rate of the industry. The market factors impacting the global sector also include provincial trade policies, international trade disputes, entry barriers, and other regulatory restrictions.

Verified Market Dashboard:

VMI is BI powered Database that helps thousands of companies globally gather insights on over 20,000+ emerging and niche markets helping them make critical revenue impacting decisions. VMI assists your organization in planning for the future along with providing a holistic competitive landscape with overall market potential and in depth market share analysis broken down by Region, Country, Segments and key market leaders. VMRs database leverages its years of data gathering ability providing insights on trends and helping you with accurate future forecasts for your market research needs.

About us:

Verified Market Research is a leading Global Research and Consulting firm servicing over 5000+ customers. Verified Market Research provides advanced analytical research solutions while offering information enriched research studies. We offer insight into strategic and growth analyses, Data necessary to achieve corporate goals, and critical revenue decisions.

Our 250 Analysts and SMEs offer a high level of expertise in data collection and governance use industrial techniques to collect and analyze data on more than 15,000 high impact and niche markets. Our analysts are trained to combine modern data collection techniques, superior research methodology, expertise, and years of collective experience to produce informative and accurate research.

Contact us:

Mr. Edwyne Fernandes

US: +1 (650)-781-4080UK: +44 (203)-411-9686APAC: +91 (902)-863-5784US Toll-Free: +1 (800)-7821768

Email: [emailprotected]

Here is the original post:
Manufactured Housing Market Expansion Projected to Gain an Uptick During 2020-2027 - The Haitian-Caribbean News Network

Fewer people are choosing to live in senior housing amid the pandemic. Occupancy has gone down more than 2.5% for two quarters in a row.

A trade group for housing providers looked at numbers from April through September of this year and found the senior housing sector is experiencing the largest drop in occupancy on record.

We have heard from people who, you know, their first priority is to get older parents out of more hazardous locations, such as nursing homes, and when they are looking for options in terms of where to move them, part of the option of course is to bring them into their home, said Danielle Arigoni, Director of AARP Livable Communities.

Arigoni says the financial benefits of living in a multi-generational home are getting some people to think about it during the pandemic. But others are avoiding it because of concerns about COVID-19 exposure risks for older family members.

Arigoni says there is a renewed interest in accessory dwelling units. That's something UMH Properties is working on now with its "care cottages." The service will let people lease a prefabricated 1 bedroom 1 bath temporary home that you put on your property.

We believe we can get it approved because it's going to be temporary. It's going to be ADA compliant. And with those things in mind, the zoning department of a town should approve bringing the manufactured home onto somebody's lot where it's zoned as a single-family residential lot, said Sam Landy, CEO of UMH Properties.

Landy says COVID-19 sparked the idea for the care cottages, but he expects there to be interest in them beyond the pandemic.

The company has received dozens of people asking about the care cottages since it started marketing them in September.

If you have older family members moving into your home instead, AARP recommends having certain parameters around chores and expectations. Privacy can be a concern for an older adult who has lived alone for a long time. You also need to prepare your home for things like trip hazards.

View original post here:
More choosing to live in multi-generational homes over senior living facilities - The Denver Channel

By Sandy Kristiansson, Board Member for Fort Adams Trust

The Fort Adams Trust has been awarded a grant of $150,000 from The Champlin Foundation to assist the Trust in the restoration of Fort Adams Southeast Demi-Bastion. FollowingFort Adamsdecommissioning in the early 1950s,the Southeast Demi- bastion has been ravaged by weather and vandalism, resulting in several vault collapses and roof failures, and today remains one of the Forts most critical areas in need of restoration.

This grant from The Champlin Foundation is their second, totaling $300,000 for the project. In combination with an additional grant from the McBean Foundation in 2019, and the Rhode Island Capital funds from RI Department of Environmental Management, each in the amount of $300,000, the latest Champlin grant will allow the Trust to undertake the most significant restoration of Historic Fort Adams in nearly a decade. In all, the Fort Adams Trust has been able to raise enough funds to match the State funding three-to-one with private donations.

The Champlin Foundation funds will be targeted at helping cover the cost of the restoration and stabilization of the Southeast Demi-Bastions roof. This project will entail the removal of soil from the ramparts, originally designed to protect the fort from enemy artillery, and the terreplein, where the forts defenders would have historically been positioned to return fire with cannon and muskets.Critical to this restoration will be the installation of a waterproof liner where the earth is to be removed to protect the historic arches below the terreplein and rampart from water. Historic venting chimneys will be rebuilt, as well and the soil and grass sod reinstalled protecting the space below. The work is slated to start at the end of 2020 with Gnazzo Construction being the lead contractor and design work provided by Newport Collaborative Architects. Completion of this restoration project is anticipated to be accomplished by June of 2021.

The Southeast Demi-Bastion Project is a priority in the continuing restoration efforts by the Trust, stated Chris Zeeman, Vice President of the Fort Adams Trust. The Demi-Bastion Project is one of the many preservation needs of the fort and we are now fortunate to initiate the process with the assistance of the grants. Although the perception of the fort is one of indestructibility; the age and weather conditions that the structure is subject to require extensive refurbishment and preservation work that would not be feasible without the grants and the state, Zeeman further imparted.

The generosity of The Champlin Foundation and other philanthropic organizations are critical to Fort Adams long-term survival, offered Joe Dias, Executive Director of the Fort Adams Trust. The Trust continues to work with RI DEM in restoring the Fort and with the generous grant partnerships that will enable future generations to appreciate the rich heritage Fort Adams offers. A special thank you to our locally elected leaders Representative Marvin L. Abney, Representative Lauren H. Carson, Senator Dawn M. Euer and Senator Louis P. DiPalma for supporting the Fort and this project at the legislative level, Dias added.

The Southeast Demi-Bastion restoration is one of the many projects the Fort Adams Trust has planned in the near future. Most recently this fall, the Trustfinished repointing the embrasures on the East Wall by the main entrance to the Fort and will now start on the Demi-Bastion effort.

About the Fort Adams Trust:

The Fort Adams Trust is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit responsible for preservation, programming, and promoting the National Historic Landmarks in Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island. Over 100,000 people tour the Fort and attend events in the Park annually. The Trust accepts donations to support its preservation and programming missions.http://www.FortAdams.org

We couldnt do what we do without READER Support.

If youre thankful for Whats Up Newp, please consider supporting us through our supporter program.

Every dollar supports our articles, newsletters, interviews, videos, livestreams, and efforts to keep you informed about all thats happening, new, and to do in Newport County.

Original post:
Fort Adams Trust continues its restoration efforts with a grant from The Champlin Foundation - What'sUpNewp

By Broomfield Wildlife Master, Sheri Hoffman

Fall is the time when the young animals have grown up and moved away from home. Now is a great time to check around your fence line or under porches and sheds to see if you need to seal up any openings or holes. Evicting or excluding unwanted animals now allows them to find shelter in a more appropriate spot for the upcoming winter and ensures that they wont use your yard for a spring nest or den.

Rabbits are abundant in town and excluding them from your front yard is very difficult because this area is typically open and not fenced. A good start is to locate and fill any holes under the concrete, porch, steps or driveway. Rabbits dig holes about two inches in diameter. If you have a hole larger than that, you may have another animal (keep reading).

Begin by placing a wadded up piece of paper in the hole and then monitor the hole. If the paper is pushed inside, the rabbit has gone in the hole; if the paper is pushed out then the animal has exited and now is the time to seal up the hole. You can accomplish this by adding dirt, concrete, rocks or chicken wire. Chicken wire or one-inch mesh, galvanized wire works best. Dig down about two inches and secure the wire into the ground with landscape stakes. Place the mesh over the hole so the rabbit cannot gain entry and cover this area with soil and sod if applicable.

Your back yard is a bit easier to secure from rabbits. If you have rabbits living under the deck, youll need to seal the deck up with chicken wire but leave a small hole for any rabbits to escape. Use the waded paper technique here too. Ensure the rabbits have left and then finish sealing up the deck, using the same method described above. You can also cover the chicken wire with a decorative lattice panel if you prefer not to see it. Next, walk the fence line around your backyard.

Look for any holes under the fence or broken fence slats. If you find a hole, the chicken wire solution is the best idea for securing your fence line and it is typically permanent (with yearly monitoring). Please be sure to secure your porch area before sealing your fence line so that any rabbits that are in the yard have a chance to escape and dont run under the porch.Voles are also common in town and look like mice but are usually darker in color.

They are active under the snow and make shallow dirt tunnels that look like run-ways, through your grass. These tunnels are exposed when the snow melts. Fall is the perfect time to prepare your yard and avoid vole damage in the spring.

Habitat management involves close mowing of your grass in the fall (final mow) and weed control in grassy borders that may exist next to your yard. Voles avoid exposed areas so close mowing followed by raking any run-ways will disrupt their activities. Voles may also take up residence near bird feeders or gardens which will be an easy food supply all year round so pick-up fallen bird feed and use feeders that are as secure as possible. To exclude voles from gnawing on your trees and shrubs, encircle the tree with a quarter-inch mesh hardware cloth or a 3 inch diameter plastic-mesh cylinder. These items should be buried 3 inch to 6 inch below the surface and extend 18 inches above the ground.

Raccoons may be another unwanted visitor especially if they show up inside your home (typically through the chimney or pet door). Fall is a great time to install a chimney cap or check the existing cap to ensure it is secure. If the chimney cap is not secure, the mother raccoon may make a nest and have babies in your chimney when spring arrives. While you are on the roof, check for holes along the edges and under soffits. Raccoons and squirrels will move in if they are afforded a chance.

To keep squirrels off your roof, trim tree limbs at least four feet from the edge of your roof. If you live in a heavily wooded area and this is impossible, then check your roof for chew marks and holes. Squirrels are capable of chewing a hole approximately three inches in diameter to gain access to your attic.

Preventing skunks from nesting in your yard next spring means sealing up potential nest sites this fall. Skunks have poor eyesight and typically do not climb, so look for signs of a skunk on the ground. They routinely take up residence under backyard sheds or decks, and may have more than one entry point. Look for dig marks and a hole roughly 6 inches in diameter. Skunks may also lay dormant for a month or more during the winter months so preventing them access to your yard in the fall means less issues in the spring. Walk the fence line and look for signs of diggingthey can gain access to your yard by crawling under the fence or gate, you probably wont smell them. If you see signs of activity, seal the holes using the chicken wire method described above. Since skunks are very good diggers, run the chicken wire two inches below the surface and then bend it at a 90-degree angle and run it at least 12 inches away from the fence, in an L shape. Secure the wire in the ground with landscape stakes and then cover it up. This way, when digging starts, the skunk will run into the wire and back off.

Animals can make a home where they find food, water, shelter and space. As always, please avoid feeding wild animals. Pet food, bird seed, uncovered garbage cans, uncovered compost piles, fallen fruit and barbecue grills can be an attractant to a hungry animal. Taking time in the Fall to prevent unwanted issues next Spring will be well worth your efforts. These animals live around us but they do not have to live with us and these tips can be implemented to avoid future conflicts.

If you have questions for your Broomfield Wildlife Masters, please call 303-464-5554, leave a message and well call you back. The Broomfield Wildlife Masters are residents that volunteer to help address wildlife issues in cooperation with the City and County of Broomfield Open Space Department.

See more here:
Fall time to exclude, evict unwanted wildlife from yards - The Daily Camera