See Beautiful Grant Recipient: Blueprint 58

The feature below is brought to you by Blueprint 58, an organization that has received a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here.
 
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.

At Blueprint 58, we do not believe that we are here to create more beauty, but rather to be a spark, with the hope that relationships can encourage and empower the beautiful assets that already reside in the community. Blueprint 58 was founded upon the realization that community development is only truly achieved through lasting mutually transformative relationships. We have seen such beauty in our community through the relationships that have been formed and fostered through Blueprint 58. Especially in these past two years, we have seen these relationships build a community that comes together to care for each other, and that is the true beauty of community; neighbors coming together, across boundaries of race and class and history and culture, to show up for one another.

Our ability to strengthen our community comes from a place of trust and familiarity because we prioritize building relationships with our neighbors. This trust provides Blueprint 58 with a unique position to better support and empower our community. Since Blueprint 58’s inception, we have strived to include the voices of our neighbors in all of our decisions. Valuing the voices of our community means that we only develop programs in direct response to community needs. A major concern for many of our neighbors currently is affordable housing. We have heard from many in our community that there is a need for support in maintaining housing, as well as a need for connection to affordable housing. Because of this voiced need, Blueprint 58 developed our new Housing Program.

Crises of all types have been shown to negatively affect communities of color and low income communities at a much higher rate than other areas. The affordable housing crisis is no different. By addressing this specific issue in our community, we are advocating for justice for our students and families. For the past few years, our community has experienced much change, with a lot of this change helping to spark economic development and bring business to our neighborhood. However, because of this development, property values and taxes have greatly increased, forcing many neighbors whose families have lived here for decades to move.

Our goals for this new Housing Program are to increase housing stability and neighbor retention in the Pittsburgh neighborhood and to provide transitional housing for young adults and support them in finding and maintaining stable housing. We specifically want to focus our Housing Program on keeping neighbors in place while housing costs rise, ensuring that legacy neighbors - along with their children and grandchildren - are offered a chance to benefit from community transformation.

In doing so, our hope is to see our neighborhood flourish from the inside. For us at Blueprint 58, justice means that our neighbors who have spent their lives living and loving this community should have the opportunity to stay in the area they call home and continue to be a part of its transformation and development. Our hope is that our neighbors who have known the beauty of our neighborhood in the past can be a part of the beauty of the future. 

Submitted by: Madi Hellsten
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