By Sheldon Cooper
My daughter just turned 10 months old last week and is bursting with energy for life. It seems that every day she is acquiring new skills and capacities. The visible and audible joy she consistently expressed when seeing a cat has recently expanded to include dogs, favorite people, phones, cell phone chargers, coffee grinders and metro buses. Yesterday she was struggling to coordinate her arms and legs to produce an effective forward crawl, and today she charges around the room on all fours exploring every nook. Her brain synapses (so I’ve read) are developing at an exponential rate. It’s all her parents can do to keep up with her.
In many ways, Homestead is in a similarly exciting growth phase.
We’re growing fast. We recently added our 32nd house to the land trust and have five more homes scheduled to be added in the next 6 weeks. At this pace, we’ll double our stock of affordable homes and the number of homes added to the land trust over year.
We’re planning for more growth. We’re almost finished with a business planning process that will guide our future growth, as we strive towards expanding our growth rate towards our eventual goal of adding 100 homes per year to the land trust.
We’re moving. We were outgrowing our old office space just as the building we were in was about to be redeveloped. Our new office at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill gives us a bit of room to grow. We’ll be holding an open house to show off our new office space on September 10, 2008 from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm. Come by and say hello.
We’re growing up. Holding our first fundraising event (our successful Dinner Auction June 20th), launching our new computer server for safely and securely storing Homestead electronic files, and soon advertising to hire an additional staff person to help us cover our expanding work load, Homestead is laying down the foundation to support future growth.
My role as new parent and director of Homestead keeps me on my toes. I’m excited to see what new phases and capacity will begin to reveal itself as we grow and change throughout this key juncture in our organizational history.
If you're interested in seeing the locations of all current Homestead homes, here is a map showing the homes and condos in the land trust.



