My Life. My neighborhood. Our world.

 Learning from the Past/Planning for the Future
(note: includes practical applications of sustainable models and green concepts)

December 9-10, 2008
Marriott Coralville Hotel & Convention Center
Coralville, Iowa

 Green Communities is the first national green building program focused entirely on affordable housing. Launched by Enterprise in fall 2004, Green Communities is designed to help developers, investors, builders and policymakers make the transition to a greener future for affordable housing.

A comprehensive offering of Green Grants, loans, tax-credit equity, training and technical assistance gives developers and builders the resources to bring green projects to life....

The Flood of 2008 in Cedar Rapids devastated the older core neighborhoods around Downtown Cedar Rapids. For one hundred years, these inter-generational, tight knit neighborhoods have provided modest, yet pleasant affordable homes. These are our working class, historic neighborhoods. Our City never officially designated these neighborhoods as historic districts, but the real fact is, the hands that built these historic homes are the very same hands that built the economic base of this City in factories, mills, machine shops and foundries.
 

This sentence captures the overall positive and supportive reply by Mayor Halloran to the Rebuild And Grow August 20th proposal to the Cedar Rapids City Council: "We share your confidence that the citizens of Cedar Rapids are capable of anything we undertake together, and we look forward to working together to help our neighbors." The full letter further explains some of the programs and resources available to our grassroots initiatives.

KGAN talks to Mike RichardsAs a companion "human interest" story to the excellent feature story on the Rebuild And Grow petition to City Council and civic leaders, KGAN News talked with Mike Richards to learn "more about the man behind the petition." (Actually, it's the man and woman behind the petition, but Lynette wasn't available when the story was taped.) This interview gave Rebuild And Grow co-founder Mike Richards an opportunity to drive home the message that each of us, whether flooded or not, need to reach inside ourselves and decide if we want to be pitiful or powerful.

Momentum is building city-wide to get behind the Rebuild And Grow program to mobilize ourselves, our friends, and neighbors as we swing back into emergency mode to prepare our flood-ravaged neighborhoods for the coming Winter. Just we we pulled together to sandbag before the flood, we need an aggressive, volunteer-powered effort to gut and seal properties before Winter adds further damage to what the flood has done. A Top Story feature on CBS affiliate KGAN is helping to spread the word about our recent petition to City Council and area civic leaders. In addition to the excellent on-air story, the KGAN web site has a detailed story on-line that includes details of our request and response from City leaders. In addition, the full petition copy is included. Click on the image at left or follow this link to the KGAN web site where you can watch the video and read the companion story.

The Green Shirts are coming to – or are already in – your neighborhood! We strongly encourage you to participate in the neighborhood assessments being conducted by the Linn Area Long Term Recovery Coalition (LALTRC).

There is much we can learn from people who have faced natural disasters in other places. How they coped with the day to day aftermath of a most traumatic change in their lives gives us insight into our own. If nothing else we can learn that what we feel - the emotional numbing and detachment, followed by disappointment, anger, resentment and bitterness - are all natural parts of the recovery process.

Best Practice Recommendation – The title of this 124-page document says it all: The Broadmoor Community Planning and Implementation Process: A Guide to Community-Driven Recovery. This document is a shining best practices example of 'how' the grassroots-organized neighbors of the Broadmoor community of New Orleans are rebuilding their neighborhoods to be even better than before Katrina changed their lives forever.