In partnership with the City of Green River and Rural Community Assistance Corporation, the Epicenter has been conducting a housing survey for Green River. Chris Lezama, an AmeriCorps VISTA, has been documenting the current housing conditions.

Here’s some preliminary numbers:
There are 476 dwellings in Green River: 301 stick-built houses, 30 modular houses, 12 apartments, 133 trailers.
54% of those 476 dwellings are rated “new” or “good”.
15% are rated “deteriorated” (still livable but needing major improvement)
31% are rated “delapidated” (vacant, condemnable, or otherwise not suitable for occupation).

This information will be used in the creation of the housing plan for the city. Every city in Utah is required to have a Housing Plan; but due to the assessments and critical evaluations needed, many rural towns do not have one.

The Housing Plan, once complete, will lay out steps, milestones, and pathways towards improving the quality of living for our town’s residents.

People are always going on about Spring Cleaning, but we always seem to be getting ourselves in order during the Fall. You really have to prepare for Winter in Green River:

*Winterizing your house (acquiring & cutting firewood manually, sealing all doors & windows, etc.)
*Saving money for higher energy bills especially if you heat your home with propane. Green River does not have natural gas. Some people even heat their houses with coal!
*Applying for H.E.A.T.
*Figuring out how to finance visiting home (AL & CA, for us) for the Holidays and getting back
*Figuring out how to get home and back while avoiding blizzards and ice-storms
*Winterizing all projects- Two years ago we worked through the Winter on the Baxter Building, but this year we have to dry-in the Habitat for Humanity House. Jack will lead the effort.

The list goes on, but you get the picture. Every year we forgot how hot the summers are and how cold the winters can get. It’s going to be 27-degrees tonight in Green River. So it begins. We’ll be keeping warm next to our wood stove with hot chocolate watching scary movies, so don’t you worry about us. We just hope everyone else in our town is warm tonight. Please encourage residents to apply for H.E.A.T. We also suggest using hot-oil radiant space heaters (like this one, for example) to supplement heating your home. They’re energy efficient, warm up any room quickly, safe, and inexpensive (compared to what you’d pay using propane to heat your whole house).

Anyone available to come here to get the Habitat house “dried in”?

It needs a little more framing (to be completed this week), a couple inspections, and at minimum, the roof put on. And it has to happen now. Windows, exterior doors, and siding is also on the docket.

We’ll scrap together money to fly you out here.

Call us at 435 564 3330.

Ali Osborn has a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University where he majored in Studio Art with a focus in printmaking. Ali now lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and since graduating, Ali has managed the Guild Art Supply (a locally owned and operated, independent art supply retail store) and co-founded Big Wheel Press.

Ali will join us at Epicenter on January 9, 2012. Two. Thousand. And. Twelve. The Future! The End of Times! How exciting. He’ll stay in Green River for one month as a Fellow making beautiful artifacts and enjoying Winter in Utah. We can’t wait!

*Tallest Award to be proven upon arrival. Upon confirmation, Ali will be deemed “Tall” and given a badge, medal, or certificate of some sort. We’re obsessed with height because we’re all short. All of us. Short. It’s kind of an unspoken rule that we’re breaking by letting in Ali.

Ali was referred to the Frontier Fellowship through our First Frontier Fellow, Charlotte XC Sullivan. They share the same hometown (Northampton, MA). Ali will be Epicenter’s eighth Frontier Fellow.

Apply for the Frontier Fellowship. Email us for more information.

Bring all the necessary documentation including:
1. Identification: Current Driver’s License or State ID.
2. Social Security cards for yourself and all persons in your household who are age 18 and older.
3. A copy of your most recent & active utility bills from each utility supplier (i.e, both gas & electric).
4. Proof of ALL income received by all household members for the month of October.
5. Proof of medical expenses you paid during October.
6. Proof of any child support and/or alimony you paid out in October.
7. Proof of disability (must be at least 6 months).
8. Proof of age of a child in the home age five (5) and under such as a birth certificate, blessing certificate, etc.

***Additional documentation may be required.***

More on HEAT

A: In Windsor, Ontario, Canada. No joke! Windsor is located across the river from Detroit, Michigan for those of you not familiar with Canada (AKA everyone not Canadian).

Jack, along with Epicenter Past & Honorary Crew members (Megan Deal and Brett Randall Jones), is an Artist-In-Residence at the Broken City Lab’s Homework: Infrastructure & Collaborations in Social Practices.

Homework is four-day residency, two-day conference, and collaboratively-written publication aimed at generating conversation around alternative infrastructures, radical collaboration, social practice, art implicated in social change, neighborhood-level activities, city-wide imaginations, site-specific curiosities, tactical resistance, new models for art education and research.

Anyone want to ‘fess-up to gifting us a sack of potatoes, a magazine subscription to Martha Stewart Living (to 180 S Broadway not our P.O. Box 444), and a random episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia via dropbox?

Thanks!