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by Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane
August/September 2006
Following the May opening celebration of
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The Scudder House ribbon-cutting ceremony took place less than two years after delegates of the 2004 Annual Meeting authorized the Conference’s Board of Directors to partner with SMOC to renovate the dilapidated house for use as a transitional sober housing residential facility for formerly homeless women. |
Scudder House, 12 women moved into the newly renovated house on the Framingham campus and stepped into the next phase of their journey from addiction back to health and wholeness.
At the 205th Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference held in 2004, delegates authorized the Conference’s Board of Directors to partner with South Middlesex Opportunity Council (SMOC) to renovate Scudder House for use as a transitional sober housing residential facility for formerly homeless women. The MACUCC leased the building to SMOC for a nominal rent of $1.00 per year, for a term of up to 35 years, while SMOC was responsible for all renovation costs. Scudder House, the smaller white farmhouse on the property, had not been used for years and had fallen into great disrepair.
“It’s wonderful that the Conference can share this space in such a valuable way, instead of leaving the building to waste away,” comments Nancy Lawrence, Chair of the Conference Board of Directors. “Almost everyone saw this as a positive thing to do.”
The building, painted a pale gray on the outside and a cheery yellow on the inside, has 12 bedrooms, including one handicap-accessible room. Each room holds one twin bed and a chest of drawers, as well as a closet. Common areas include living and dining space, a kitchen, a laundry area, and two large bathrooms inside and a private patio outside. It looks like many other houses in the area, but the difference is the family living in it.
The group who will live at Scudder House is made up of 11 women who are in recovery from alcohol or substance abuse. They have graduated from other programs and are stable, working, and have been so far successful in their recovery process. By living in this house, the women will get the housing, counseling, and peer support they need to continue down that path. The women are expected to stay anywhere between 6 and 18 months, depending on individual needs, before they move on to permanent housing and self-sufficient living. The twelfth woman is a house manager who oversees the facility.
Tom Sannicandro, the Massachusetts State Representative for Framingham and Ashland, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and commented that the facility was beautiful both inside and out. “It’s a nice addition to the neighborhood, but getting these women back into the community is the best part of the program,” he noted.
Conference Interim Minister and President Steve Sterner welcomed the crowd of about 40 guests and said it was a pleasure to partner with SMOC. “This is an exciting time because we are committed to issues of affordable housing and social justice and helping people take their rightful place in society. This house embodies what the church is all about.”
As if on cue, while SMOC representatives addressed the crowd and thanked everyone for a true community effort, a local woman stopped by to drop off a welcome basket for the women who would soon be her neighbors.
Conference staff members Dawn Hammond, Associate Conference Minister, and Diane Montgomery, Framingham Center Manager, were also thanked for their vision of what the dilapidated building could be-come. “I remem-ber Diane and Dawn approaching me with this opportunity four years ago,” said SMOC Executive Director Jim Cuddy. “Your vision of what it could be and how useful it would be led us to this day of celebration.”
Andrew Nelson, Director of the Housing Innovations Fund (HIF), Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), summed up the meaning of the partnership between SMOC and the MACUCC. “This house will soon help put 11 lives back together. Then as they leave, there’ll be others in the future to take their places; hundreds more, then thousands more who will benefit from this facility. And we’ll know that God is still speaking.”
The SMOC Housing Corpora-tion is a non-profit housing corporation that aims to preserve and improve existing affordable housing and to develop new housing choices for low- and moderate- income residents. The corporation aims to integrate human services with rental and program units while providing safe, decent and affordable housing choices for area households. For more information on SMOC, visit www.smoc.org.
For more coverage and a video tour of the facility, go to http://www.macucc.org/xnews/scudder-opens.htm