On May 25, 2000, the Federal Home Loan Bank System held its sixth annual Community Partnership Awards at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C. Among the 24 initiatives honored at the event were projects from Vermont and Rhode Island.

For each of the 12 regions in the System, awards went to two partnerships: one for affordable housing and one for community economic development. Each award is held jointly by a member institution and a community-development group — partners in solving specific housing and economic-development problems within their communities.

"You know excellence when you see it," said Michael A. Jessee, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston. "Both New England winners planned and managed their projects well, and were able to raise an exceptional amount of private funding."

Cora B. Whitney Senior Living Facility
The 2000 Affordable Housing Partnership Award for New England honored Vermont member Merchants Bank, of South Burlington, and sponsor Regional Affordable Housing Corporation (RAHC), of Bennington. The two worked together to win a $110,000 grant from the Bank's Affordable Housing Program (AHP) on behalf of the Cora B. Whitney Senior Living Facility.

The initiative took a very creative approach to preserving a piece of local history and easing a city's affordable-housing crunch.

When it bought a century-old brick schoolhouse from the local school board, RAHC wanted to create more elderly housing in Bennington, where roughly a third of the population is over the age of 55. The agency added a new wing and partial second story to the former school, creating the Cora B. Whitney Senior Living Facility — the first mixed-income housing for area elders.

Eleven of the facility's one-bedroom units are reserved for people with incomes below 50 percent of the area's median income; the remaining units are priced on a sliding scale according to each tenant's income. The county provides residents with a range of services, from transportation to home health aides.

Adams-Farley Counseling Center
The 2000 Economic Development Partnership Award for New England honored member Fleet National Bank and sponsor East Bay Mental Health of East Providence, Rhode Island. Fleet used a $552,500 advance from the Bank's former Community Investment Program (CIP) to finance East Bay's purchase and renovation of the Adams-Farley Counseling Center — the building in which it is headquartered.

"Our lease costs kept going up, to the point where we couldn't afford to rent the building any more. Buying and modernizing the building at a reasonable cost let us put more money into client services," said John P. Digits, CEO of East Bay Mental Health.

An acute care outpatient facility, Adams-Farley provides children and adults with psychiatric evaluations, crisis intervention, and addiction counseling. Thanks to its savings in operating costs, the center now offers more intensive services that will minimize children's hospitalizations and out-of-home placements.

This article appeared originally in the Bank's Tools for Housing and Community Economic Development, Issue 15, Fall 2000.