Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises (FAHE) sent Melissa to rural Kentucky to photograph an annual report on their programs. A local contact in Berea drove miles with Melissa through Kentucky’s mountainous back roads to meet people who were directly helped by FAHE, a coalition of 46 community-based nonprofit organizations. FAHE works to make housing affordable and available to low income families which clearly made a difference for one family who had lost their home in a fire. For a young mother who works long hours at a job while finishing her college degree, it was a chance to raise her son in a high quality, low cost new home. In the south part of the state, a construction worker who retrained at middle age to build with energy efficiency, conducted tests on a home built in a pilot program of high tech buildings that will be sold to lower income families.
Some initiatives focus on land use. A father and son checked mushrooms they grow on logs and the newly planted Chestnut trees in a woods that is retained in a carbon exchange for development.