2023 Annual Report and 2024 Vision

To the friends and supporters of Sisters Habitat for Humanity, I am deeply grateful for your dedication plus the time, talents and resources you have generously shared with us.  You have enabled Sisters Habitat to achieve amazing results over the past year and to lay the solid foundation for the significant expansion of our affordable housing services in 2024.

2023 saw the initiation of two critically important initiatives:  the successful introduction of our Land Trust Model of ownership and the evolution to a hybrid construction methodology that empowers us to build and renovate homes more rapidly resulting in a geometric increase the quantity of affordable homes that we will create within the Sisters community.

Our Land Trust Model ensures permanent affordability of the homes we build or renovate.  Under this ownership model, homeowners have a 99-year leasehold interest in their land and fee-simple title to their home.  The lease renews for another 99-year term upon transfer of ownership.  The Land Trust means lower purchase costs for homeowners now, lower monthly costs forever, and perpetual income qualification requirements to guarantee the home will remain affordable for future homeowners.

Our hybrid model marries the rapidity and capacity advantages of locally contracted construction (which supports the economic vitality of our community and provides job opportunities) with the skills and reduced labor expense inherent in our talented volunteer construction team.

These two initiatives, combined with our diligence in successfully pursuing grant opportunities, the critically important financial support derived from donors, plus the net income from our retail store operations will enable us to create more than 30 affordable and 6 workforce homes in Sisters within 36 months, an unprecedented achievement for us and for Sisters.

Additionally, I am very proud of the growth in our outreach exemplified by:

• Expanding accessibility to our services via our website (www.sistershabitat.org) with its integrated user-selected accessibility accommodations and instant translation into over 100 languages

• Availability of housing applications in Spanish

• Plans to include a fully ADA-compliant dwelling in our Adams Commons project and assure all other dwellings comply with visitability standards

• Assuring our Administrative Office meets visitability standards and has ADA access

We continue to be transparent with our judicial use of fiscal resources.  We openly post our Form 990 on our website.

Among our other 2023 achievements:

• Continued new construction in our Village Meadows development.  When completed, Sisters Habitat will have built 21 affordable homes.

• Continued new construction in our Woodlands project which will provide 10 affordable homes.  I gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and support of Sisters Woodlands Development, Kevin Eckert of Build LLC, as well as Matt Cohen and the phenomenal staff of CS Construction.

• Successful buyback of one Habitat home that is near completion of its renovation.  Our buyback assures this home will remain in the affordable housing inventory in Sisters.  Upon resale, it will be structured under our Land Trust Model to keep it affordably priced forever.

• Record volumes of merchandise were made available at reduced prices via our two stores, thus providing the community with the benefit of high-quality pre-owned merchandise and reducing the quantity of very usable items that would otherwise enter the waste stream.

• Supporting local businesses and their employees through our purchases of building materials and hiring of labor.

I am proud of our staff, our volunteers, and I am immensely humbled by the generosity of our community.  It is my honor to be in this partnership and part of the solution to the affordable housing shortage in Sisters.

With gratitude,