Epicenter has launched a new website called the Housing Guide for the Rural American West that gathers information for people wanting to rent, buy, or develop homes in rural Utah. While the website will serve as a hub for Epicenter’s housing information going forward, the initial uploads include resource guides for renters and homeowners and an annual maintenance guide for homeowners in English and Spanish, and a simple draw schedule template for developers working on smaller housing projects.
The Epicenter team believes everyone deserves a dignified place to call home, no matter how much money they have or where they live. While this information is intended for people in the Green River area, many of these resources are just as available to people living elsewhere in the rural parts of the Western United States.
The resource guides collect regional housing assistance programs’ eligibility requirements and contact information, and will be updated regularly over time. This information was previously scattered across different agencies’ websites, and was difficult to navigate, especially for families experiencing housing instability.
The maintenance guide is intended for new homeowners, or anyone who could benefit from a reminder of the regular maintenance houses require. Small issues eventually escalate into large, sometimes catastrophic, problems for the structure of a house or health of its users. The costs of remediation also rise as housing defects worsen, putting solutions beyond the reach of lower income homeowners.
The draw schedule template is a spreadsheet that developers can use to plan for and track a project’s budget during construction. Epicenter used this for organizing Canal Commons Phase 1, and it should work well for other smaller-scale projects. Epicenter welcomes any and all feedback from developers that try using it, so that future editions can be improved.
This project was primarily made possible by Enterprise Community Partners, with additional support from AARP, Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Writing and research was completed by Epicenter project manager Kenny Fallon Jr. and the website and guides were designed by Gavin Fraser.