All of us very much hope this finds our applicants, volunteers, supporters and friends of all kinds in good health at this time.
In regards to the current pandemic that we all continue to experience, HomeFront’s leadership have been carefully monitoring community health indicators. Every step, we have been exploring ways to provide home repair relief while keeping all participants safe. Since March 2020, HomeFront has modified our service models to assist more than 80 families in need with repairs and counting.
Special Message to Those in Need of Home Repair
We want you to know that we are keeping your requests active in our system. Up to now, we have limited the on-site home visits that are a part of our evaluation process. As much as we can, we are updating repair needs by phone. If you have not already provided it, we encourage you to contact our office and provide your email address so that we can stay in touch that way. Please also confirm your name and an updated phone number. We hope to resume our home evaluation visits as soon as we deem it safe. In order to keep you, your family our staff and volunteers safe, we will be asking whether you have been vaccinated as a routine question. As you will see below, HomeFront is helping families on more of a year-round basis. Unless you are notified otherwise, your status remains under active consideration.
For All
Due to COVID, we determined that the timing of our traditional HomeFront Day in May was not advisable for 2020 and for this year. A total of 15 volunteer groups joined us in September of 2020 to tackle repairs, focusing on the exterior of the home. This was designed to limit any exposure among our volunteers and beneficiaries. Roughly 20 volunteer groups signed up to do the same in the Fall of 2021. HomeFront supplies N95 masks, gloves, safety goggles and anti-bacterial products to help keep everyone safe. It is our hope that community health statistics will permit us to return to our traditional HomeFront Day timetable in May 2022. We will be sure to keep all of our applicants, volunteers and supporters posted.
If there is any positive to emerge from this public health crisis, it is the creativity that it has inspired in all of us. HomeFront has assisted more than 40 families year-round by ratcheting up our Critical Pro Repair (CPR) service. Each year, we receive qualified requests from families with compelling needs that are not suited to our volunteer group model. The design of CPR is to work with skilled and professional volunteers to tackle technical repairs, such as, replacing steps, adding railings, fixing decks, and installing wheel chair ramps, among other improvements. Out of an abundance of caution, since the start of the pandemic, all of our CPR projects have been completed by skilled HomeFront staff to mitigate the risk of COVID exposure. We will continue to consider applicants for help with repairs through CPR year-round.
As we have all seen, the costs of building materials have risen greater than any other time in history. We are doing our best to acquire materials as inexpensively as possible, but, it makes it much more difficult to tackle as many repair needs as before. We will continue to keep repair needs that we are unable to address on our “radar” for future consideration. In the meantime, we welcome financial donations of any size to keep us from having to limit the repairs we tackle too drastically.
As always, we invite any input or questions you may have on ways to help or get help. We will, of course, continue to revisit our plans in view of what is happening in our communities. We will remain in touch and wish you and your families good health and peace of mind in these unprecedented times.
