Habitat Expanding West End Neighborhood

Upper Cumberland Habitat for Humanity set to move on a ten-lot expansion to Cookeville’s West End neighborhood.

Executive Director Jeremy Byrd said the current space has only three buildable lots remaining. Byrd said his team hopes to be able to open the project for bids in the next few months.

“We will need to connect two roads that we’ve already put over there in the development,” Byrd said. “We’ll also have to make sure that the elevations are good and that the utilities are as they should be.”

Byrd said the work will take a while as there will be a lot of earth moving and dirt work that has to be done. Byrd said ten lots may not sound like much, but each home will provide many different benefits to the families living in them.

“There have been multiple studies that show how, statistically speaking, people who become homeowners and not just renters in a community, they become better citizens,” Byrd said. “They get more involved, they get more invested, they put their roots down, they make a bigger difference in that community.”

The Cookeville Planning Commission is set to consider taking the preliminary plat for the expansion on as a study item at its Monday meeting. Byrd said this phase of the development has been planned for multiple years but the organization was waiting until the need arose to move forward.

“When West End Place was begun, we knew that development costs a lot of money,” Byrd said. “And so we had to take bite-sized chunks. We had to approach it as we had the capacity to, both financially and with other resources.”

Byrd said Habitat’s focus is not only to put someone in a home but to change the culture and trajectory of their families. Byrd said this shift may not extend to the whole community but those families who end up in the new homes will broaden the impact by sharing it with their children and grandchildren.

“I came across a study not too long ago that said in the state of Tennessee for every ten new jobs that have been created in this booming economy we’ve only built six new houses,” Byrd said. “So there’s quite a need for affordable housing in our area.”