CHARLESTON, W.Va.—- Despite the rain, joy could be felt as community members and Appalachia Service Project workers came together Wednesday to dedicate a newly remodeled home to Deanna McKinney.
ASP is dedicated to providing families with high-quality home repairs and improvements. And the Charleston Land Reuse Agency was created in 2019, where they promote the productive use of property that is suitable for public space, conservation, housing and commercial use, while also pursuing the management, inventory and disposition of those properties.
Annalee Posey, (photo ASP website)
ASP’s Assistant Director of Home Repair Annalee Posey says that McKinney had been referred them.
“The recipient of this home was referred to by a trusted local partner,” Posey said. “For our first time doing a project of this magnitude in this area we kind of stuck with that, we talked with a lot of local agencies, RCCR and Westside Together being two of the primary ones who worked with us on referrals and then from there we had them apply for ASP, did some initial interviews and conversations with them.”
And that’s when they chose Deanna McKinney, who lived previously in a house on 6th Street where she provided a safe haven for kids in the community but lost the house because she wasn’t able to buy it, and she said now she gets to be that provider again.
“Well, this is definitely a blessing and it’s been a long time praying that we can actually have in the community that we can call a safe place,” McKinney said. “So, I’m super excited to be honored to be the overseer of such a place.”
In fact, McKinney has plans already in the works for kids in the community, a movie night and the setup of inflatables beside the house for kids to play on. McKinney also said that she was excited to be next to the basketball court because she had previously held events on the court for the community.
Deanna Mckinney in front of her new home
Posey added that this kind of project had been the works for a while not just for the community but for ASP as well.
“This project has been a long time of a coming, we have been working on this and talks about this have been happening since five or so years ago of how we can continue getting involved here in the Charleston area,” Posey said. “So, for us this was just the next step in getting involved in the goods things that are already happening.”
She also said that the interior and exterior was all remodeled and was a first for ASP because they normally stick to minor repairs like porches, ramps and in Kanawha County they were more focused on primary disaster relief.
And when ASP’s 2024 Kanawha County Center Director Sam Humphrey first heard about the house and project in May, she was apprehensive about it. But she said that once she saw the house excitement took over.
“We got here, and we saw this home, it was all excitement from there,” Humphrey said. “It’s something new; it’s something that ASPs never done. It was hard to be the first, but it was exciting to be the first, and I’m even more excited that it is going to continue. I think it’s going to have a lot of impact on the community and the community is going to have a lot of impact on ASP.”
The project was started in June of this year and was worked on by ASP workers and over 100 volunteers for seven weeks. After the summer program was over, ASP workers, Americorps volunteers and Triple C volunteers came in for about two weeks and helped finish everything up.
McKinney says that it was amazing to be able to walk around the house after all of the work had been done.
“It was like amazed, because it was like really, like people’s really doing this because I do what I do, but you never think about people that do the same thing you’re doing or even at a bigger scale than what you do,” McKinney said.
She was filled with joy being able to receive the house, for her family but also the community and she hopes that she can help with more projects like this so other families can feel the same joy.
“Hopefully, I can be able to do this for another family, like give them or go fix up a home and put somebody in it and give them the same joy and feeling I received today,” McKinney said.