In the middle of all the rain last week there was a brief dry period at noon Wednesday, March 28, when about 40 residents gathered to for a groundbreaking for the ECHO Village on Passion Play Road, a community for people in need of housing.
Steve Richie-Roberson, president of the ECHO Clinic Board of Directors, said there is a lot of need in the community for quality housing people can afford.
“The ECHO Medical Clinic has been a tremendous success and we expect to see the same thing happen with the ECHO Village providing homes for those most in need,” Richie-Roberson said. “Today we celebrate the groundbreaking, and in a short time we’ll have a ribbon cutting for the first homes.”
Richie-Roberson said they are looking for diversity of people who to live at the village. It would be good to have a mix of people including families with children, elders, veterans, mentally and physically disabled, and recently released first offenders.
Dr. Dan Bell, co-founder of ECHO Clinic, said World Mission Builders, who build homes and churches around the world, is sending 40 volunteers to rough in eight custom-built homes. Work on the houses is set to start in June and take two weeks to get the houses dried in.
Some volunteers are staying in RVs while others will be offered housing in the area. After WMB completes their work, the focus goes to local volunteers to add roofing, plumbing, sheetrock, HVAC and electrical.
Eventually the community is expected to have 24-25 homes, with six to eight slated for people in transition.
“The rest are going to be a core of people who will live here permanently,” Bell said. “Each phase of the project may take a year or two. I think it will be better than we ever dreamed.”
Suzie Bell, who also co-founded the ECHO Clinic, said the community would be attractive as well as practical.
“They won’t all be rubber stamped,” Bell said. “Each one will be different, and we want to make them environmentally conscious with good insulation and building materials and some solar panels. These homes will range in size from 400 square feet up to 1,200 square feet. The project is very exciting to see. We have been working on it for four years.”
The ECHO Clinic has been held up as a model for other communities when it comes to providing free healthcare to the needy, and was even honored on Oprah several years ago. Bell said she sees the potential for the ECHO Village to be a model for other communities facing similar housing issues.
The homes will be a mix of one and two bedrooms, mostly one bedroom. They are also envisioning a community house that could be used for meetings and holiday gatherings, plus a garden, a chicken house and solar panels.
“It will be a demonstration project all the way around,” Dan Bell said.
“It is really a great day,” Kimberly Clark said at the groundbreaking. “It’s exciting to me because this is a concept I’ve been working on for forty years. It’s too expensive for most workers here to rent a decent home. This village will be sustainable and affordable, using permaculture principals. This is a unique project, a chance for us to learn and show what we can do working together.”
ECHO Village homes will be rentals. Clark is also involved in developing a similar community with home ownership on Passion Play Road, north of First Christian Church. That project is called Hawk’s Hill.