(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Rural Calling: Scott McReynolds [1] ['Taylor Sisk', 'The Daily Yonder'] Date: 2024-01-08 When Scott McReynolds completed his graduate studies, he decided he’d do “one more fun thing before getting a real job.” That one fun thing became a calling and a career. McReynolds grew up in Lithonia, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. In the summer of 1990, he came to Eastern Kentucky’s Knott County to do home-repair work with the Appalachia Service Project. His was an unpaid position, and when a couple of paying jobs came open, “they very politely let me know that I was not qualified for either,” he said, “and I very politely let them know that I had no interest in staying that long – that I was here for three to six months, I was going to finish these projects up, and figure out what was next in my life. Six months later, I was doing both those jobs.” Meanwhile, an organization in nearby Hazard called the Hazard-Perry County Community Ministries, whose executive director was Gerry Roll, was operating a food bank, daycare program, homeless shelter, and crisis-aid program. Roll, along with Jennifer Weeber, the ministries’ community programs director, began noting that recipients of their services consistently cited inadequate housing as a fundamental concern. Roll and Weeber came to recognize it as not a symptom of poverty but a cause. They determined to try to get to the root of the issue. The Housing Development Alliance was thus born. McReynolds signed on, initially as a low-income representative on HDA’s board of directors. In 1994, he became its first non-volunteer employee: executive director, a position he’s yet to relinquish. Today, HDA – a nonprofit affordable housing developer serving low-income residents of Perry, Breathitt, Knott, and Leslie counties – has met the housing needs of more than 2,900 Eastern Kentuckians and provided an economic boost to this distressed region. McReynolds has raised a family here and established himself as an indispensable community member. “Scott McReynolds is our Eastern Kentucky hero,” says Betsy Clemons, executive director of the Hazard Perry County Chamber of Commerce. “His leadership and the staff of HDA have changed the landscape of Eastern Kentucky over the last 30 years.” A Broken Market Any conversation about housing – and quite a number of other things – in Eastern Kentucky must be situated in “pre-” or “post-”: before or after the massive flooding of July 2022, a “thousand-year flood.” To begin to fathom the extent of devastation visited on these rural counties through the night of July 27 and into early morning, it’s necessary to factor in some context. “We live in an area with an extraordinarily large number of folks with very limited income,” McReynolds said. “Something like 42% of our households live on less than $25,000 a year.” “All across America – rural, urban, suburban – there’s a housing crisis,” he confirmed. “There is an affordability crisis and there is a supply crisis.” “But we’re a persistent-poverty community,” the definition of which is having poverty rates above 20% for more than 30 years. “We’ve been above 20 percent poverty as a region since 1960.” This region, McReynolds said, suffers from a broken housing market. “If you came to me and said, ‘I want to build a modest, energy-efficient, well-built 1,200-square-foot home,’” he said, “it would probably cost us $175,000 to build today, including land. It would probably appraise for $150,000. … So even if you as an individual could afford to buy that house for the appraised value, the builder can’t build it for that; they’re going to lose money.” The second issue is the affordability gap. “Most of the people that we’re working with can’t even afford $150,000.” Two daunting challenges – and this before the rivers rose. Thousands of Houses Damaged McReynolds and his family live in the community of Krypton, “out in the middle of nowhere, on a mountainside” – among those fortunate to be on high ground. There are three roads out of Krypton and after that historic night of rain they were underwater for three days. As he shoveled mud from his driveway, McReynolds contemplated the role HDA would be compelled to play in the days and years ahead. The first order of business, for himself and his staff, was helping folks muck out their homes. Then what? The needs were overwhelming. “The numbers are just staggering,” McReynolds said. “I think like 14,000 families applied for FEMA assistance. In the hardest-hit counties, somewhere just shy of one in seven houses had water in the living space – thousands and thousands of houses damaged.” “We know that about 500 houses met the definition of both FEMA and the Red Cross of being destroyed. Then another 2,500 or so suffered major damage.” “Just really an unbelievable amount of devastation.” And so: “We set out to double production and do everything we were supposed to do, plus that much again in flood recovery,” he said. “And we’re about there.” They’ve climbed from around 30 employees to more than 50. HDA’s goal for this fiscal year is to build 46 houses, “which would be double our best year ever, which is just crazy,” McReynolds allowed. “But we’re on track.” Sherry Mullins and her family are among those who’ve been placed in a new home. The ground washed out beneath their doublewide trailer near Hazard; a week later, the foundation collapsed. The first weekend in March, they moved into a brand-new three-bedroom house. Through this ordeal, Mullins has come to know Scott McReynolds. She’s impressed by his dexterous nature. “He’s able to talk to anybody,” she said, “whether it be Washington D.C. or just around the corner.” Supporting Cultural Preferences HDA is structuring its recovery efforts in accordance with a document it created called “Higher Ground: Guiding Principles for a Lasting Recovery.” Among those principles are striving to ensure a just and equitable recovery, creating housing outside the floodplains and flood-prone areas, allowing for and supporting cultural preferences (“many families raised on Troublesome Creek want to stay on Troublesome Creek and many families raised in Sassafras want to stay in Sassafras”), and abiding by floodplain regulations (even when local enforcement isn’t aggressive). “We talk about our mission as using the power of housing to transform lives and build a brighter future for the community,” McReynolds said. “We’re a housing agency in a community that faces these incredible economic and development challenges, and so we want to do housing in a way that can help an individual family build wealth.” “However you define success in life – whether that’s getting a good job, whether that’s having a happy family – whatever your goal is in life, it’s going to be a lot easier to achieve if you start with an affordable, quality, stable house.” “But then housing is also this huge economic driver. We always try to do housing in a way that’s going to maximize the benefit to the community.” Which means, for example, not trucking manufactured homes into the region. “We’d rather pay somebody locally to build a house.” McReynolds would like his community to rally around the notion that “if we want to transform this region economically, housing has got to be a central component to that.” He and his team embrace the spirit of the interconnectedness of things – the multidimensional role HDA can play in lifting Eastern Kentucky. “We’re one of the epicenters of the opioid addiction crisis,” he said, “and we wanted to be part of the solution.” In conversations with advocates, they came to understand that a primary barrier to recovery was reentry to the workforce. Thus the launch of an initiative called Hope Building, offering paid, on-the-job training in residential construction to men and women in substance-use recovery. Participants are trained by HDA staff and can earn college certificates. A Learning Process The process of rebuilding and reinforcing a community after a catastrophic event has taught McReynolds quite a bit. “I’ve learned how amazing my staff is,” he said. “I mean, I knew that – but it’s just unbelievable the work they’ve done and the effort they’ve put in.” He’s likewise been overwhelmed with how the community has pulled together under such exacting circumstances. And he’s learned how to muck out a house, and that “I don’t like mucking houses.” That graduate degree McReynolds earned was a master’s of divinity. Though he embarked on an alternate career path, he’s certainly found ministry here. “Scott has earned the respect of us all in Eastern Kentucky,” Betsy Clemons confirmed. “We would not have made such progress in affordable housing over the past years without the leadership and dedication of this brilliant but very humble man.” Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/a-rural-calling-scott-mcreynolds/2024/01/08/ Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/