Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The Housing Development Alliance (HDA) was created to meet the affordable housing needs of low-income people living in our service area in Appalachian East Kentucky. The four counties we serve are some of the poorest in the entire country, with poverty levels exceeding 30%. Most of the people in our region are very low-income or low-income, with around 42% of them living on a yearly income of $25,000 or less. The poverty rates and median incomes in our area have devastated the local housing market. To put it simply, whether buying or renting, the fact is that housing is increasingly unaffordable, particularly for ordinary working-class East Kentuckians who are struggling to get by.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Homeownership
HDA's income-based Homeownership Program helps low-income individuals and families living in Breathitt, Knott, Leslie, and Perry Counties in East Kentucky become new homeowners. Prospective homeowners who qualify for our program receive Housing Counseling to prepare them for homeownership and contribute up to 150 hours of sweat equity in the construction of their homes. HDA has made the homeownership dreams of 325 East Kentucky families come true across its 29-year history.
Home Repair
Our on-staff and experienced carpenter crews have made 835 home repairs throughout the region. In the counties we serve in East Kentucky (Breathitt, Knott, Leslie, and Perry), many houses are aging, in need of updated sources of heating and cooling, and/or are not safe and accessible for those who live there. We remedy those problems by making home repairs and home rehabilitations at an affordable price for the homeowner. Our program helps very low and low-income homeowners in our area receive home-improving – and often, life-improving – repairs that would be difficult for them to complete or afford without our assistance. Many of the homeowners we’ve helped are elderly, disabled, live alone, or are Veterans.
Rental
The Housing Development Alliance owns and maintains 20 rental units. These units are designed to provide accessible, high quality, affordable housing for low-income individuals and families. Our goal is for a person or family to own an affordable home, but in some cases, renting is a better option. For some, the costs associated with owning and maintaining a home are just not feasible at the time. An affordable rental home gives families a good, healthy place to live while providing them the time to make a plan to achieve homeownership, pay off any debts, and secure employment that doesn’t require moving out of the area or uprooting the family. We have very little turnover in our rental units, which means that our rentals typically stay full. We do, however, maintain a waiting list.
Where we work
External reviews

Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of people no longer living in unaffordable, overcrowded housing as a result of the nonprofit's efforts
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our mission is to use the power of housing to transform lives and build a brighter future for our community. We do this by providing affordable, quality homes, home repairs, and rentals for low-income people living in Breathitt, Knott, Leslie, and Perry Counties in East Kentucky.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Homeownership - Build and sell at least 20 affordable homes each year.
Home Repair - Complete 60-70 home rehabs/repairs each year.
Affordable Rentals - Develop 1 to 3 new rental units each year.
Hope Building Program - Build 15 new homes for middle-income families.
Provide an affordable housing solution for 1,000 families in the next 10 years.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Our previous 29 years of experience have taught us strategies to address housing issues in our service area, as well as shown us the gaps that we have not addressed. It is our plan to build on these existing strategies and to begin to address some of the identified gaps. Our focus will continue to be our Income-Based programs. We will continue to improve and increase our ability to provide homeownership, rental and home-repair to low-income households in our community. In addition, we will grow our new Open Market products which allow us to serve families that we have not been able to serve through our traditional Income-Based programs.
HDA pledged to serve 1,000 households in the ten years from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2029 with our Homeownership, Home Repair, and Rental programs. During the next three years, HDA is projecting serving 294 households through all of our various products, putting us in a good position to accomplish our ten year goal of serving 1,000 households.
HDA has developed a reputation as a high-quality construction company. In our community, the region, and the state we have received recognition for the quality of our new homes and our repairs. However, with quality comes cost. As we grow both our Income-Based and our Open Market programs, we will strive to maintain construction quality while also continuing to determine ways to reduce costs. We will work to find the most affordable ways to provide the quality of construction that our customers expect and deserve.
Among HDA's assets is a $1.51 million Revolving Loan Fund (RLF). HDA will continue to use RLF to help achieve the production goals for this business plan by using it for land acquisition, pre-development costs and construction or permanent financing on a project, or as leverage to obtain additional investments in the corporation. We will continue to use RLF in the way that best helps the company meet its production goals. Finally, the COVID pandemic has caused us to be aware of how it is impacting our products and services currently as well as how this impact will change over the time of this plan.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
- Served over 2,900 people
- Built & sold 325 homes
- Completed 835 home repairs
- Developed 43 rental units
- Contributed over 30,000 hours of volunteer labor to the community
- Supported 80 local jobs annually - 30 are full-time jobs with benefits
- Invested $55 million back into the local economy
- Added $35 million to local tax base, resulting in over $350,000 in local tax revenue
- Provided paid, on-the-job construction training for men & women in recovery; nearly HALF of our trainees have gained full-time employment or have completed college programs soon after finishing our training in Hope Building
Our goal is to serve 1,000 families from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2029.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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What significant change resulted from feedback?
We conducted a series of community meetings within the last year in each of our counties and discovered that we were doing a poor job of informing the public outside of Perry County about our services. In response, we have devised a marketing outreach campaign to address that issue in each county we serve. Additionally, we discovered that Big Creek Ministries, a local volunteer group, is the go-to service for home repairs in Leslie County, but the chief need in that county is affordable new home construction, which we need to be offering more of to families living there. We reached out to low-income families in that county via Facebook and immediately received over 40 new applications for our Homeownership Program.
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE INC
Board of directorsas of 04/08/2022
Mr. Jonathan Collins
Attorney at Law - Appalachian Regional Healthcare
Term: 2022 -
Mr. Bobby Duff
Self-Employed
Term: 2022 -
Annie Williams
Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH)
Betsy Clemons
Hazard-Perry County Chamber of Commerce
Bobby Duff
Self-Employed
Jonathan Collins
Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH)
Johnie Akers
WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky
Brandon Cornett
WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky
Darryl Parker
Hazard Community & Technical College (HCTC)
Pam Farrel
Self-Employed
Karen Alfano
Self-Employed
Caleb Bates
Aspire Appalachia
Ricky Campbell
Whitaker Bank
Joey Jones
Fresenius Medical Care
Claudette Enriquez
WYMT
Cortney Caudill
WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 02/04/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.