St. Mary Development Corporation recently won the 2023 William J. Graves Award for Housing Excellence. The award, given by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency and Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, is presented to an organization each year in recognition of their work. In our case, the award was for our work creating affordable housing opportunities for older Ohioans and veterans. Bill Graves, a former Ohio Housing Finance Agency Board member, dedicated his life to developing safe, quality affordable housing throughout Ohio and working to end homelessness. He was also a personal friend of St. Mary’s co-founders, Dick McBride and Sr. Rose Wildenhaus, which made the award extra special.
St. Mary certainly has created a lot of affordable housing in Ohio, and even other states. Over the past 34 years, we’ve built more than 70 affordable apartment communities with nearly 5,000 housing units and more than half a billion dollars in real estate investment. Ten years ago, we began providing intensive case management (service coordination) for our residents. Since then, we’ve had more than 43,000 one-to-one meetings with our residents, connecting 80% to services such as food, healthcare, transportation, and mental health programs. We also coordinate more than 500 educational programs for residents each year.
But our primary goal isn’t excellence in real estate development or excellence in service coordination. Our primary goal is improving the quality of life of our residents. It’s helping our residents live excellent lives. Like Bobby, we look for ways to show, and tell, our residents they are loved. Often that love materializes through tangible services and programs, but, sometimes, that love is simply taking the time to listen to an older resident’s concerns or grieve with them over a loss. The combination of material support with loving relationship is why Dick McBride and Sr. Rose Wildenhaus started St. Mary. Creating affordable apartment communities was simply a way to bring that love into a single place.
One of the things of which I’m most proud is that 84% of St. Mary residents say their quality of life is “very good” or “somewhat good” despite an average annual income of only $12,400. It’s an indication that our residents know they are loved. That’s why we go to work each day.
As we complete construction of an affordable senior apartment community in Kettering and continue developing an affordable family apartment community in Trotwood, we see those homes as future foundations for love—and we may follow Bobby Kenney’s lead from a project he did at a St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter in Dayton.
Bobby stenciled in huge letters the words “You are loved” on a wall at the shelter. One of the guests there remarked, “Every time I walk by it, it brings something new. Regardless of the storms going on in my head, when I read it, it stops me right where I’m at, and brings me peace. It’s beautiful.”
Showing people they are loved is important — and so is telling them.
You can learn more about You Are Loved at www.YouAreLovedMission.com, and more about St. Mary Development at www.StMaryDevelopment.org.
Tim Bete is president of St. Mary Development Corporation. Their staff works with 1,000+ older people in their Dayton-area apartments to connect them to the services and programs they need to continue to live independently as long as possible.
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