Hillside

The Premier DASH Project

DASH's exhaustive study of housing in LaGrange presented Hillside as the perfect starting place for their long-term goal of ridding the city of substandard housing.

"The Hillside community has many natural anchors in place, the Callaway Monument, the stadium and a commercial strip," according to Ricky Wolfe, founder and chairman of DASH. "We saw tremendous potential in this neighborhood with its infrastructure and architecture we can save. Plus, Hillside has good name reputation."

The Hillside neighborhood revitalization was kicked off in a big way, with a high-profile event that took place in the very heart of the Hillside community in the summer of 2003 when Habitat for Humanity's annual Jimmy Carter Work Project came to town with former President Jimmy Carter and Habitat Founder Millard Fuller pounding nails alongside Hillside residents.

After the highly publicized event, DASH acquired considerable properties in Hillside. Using a $5 million grant from the Callaway Foundation Inc., DASH purchased 18 of the 72 houses on South Lee Street, paying as little as $18,000 for some.

Using local contractors, DASH works to rehabilitate the aged and sagging houses. Their work goes far beyond simply masking a home's imperfections; DASH provides a full-fledged overhaul, stripping each house down to the studs. Depending on the condition, a house in rehabilitation may be stripped of its interior, chimneys, siding, roof and even the foundation, if necessary. "While the focus is on constructing a modest, decent home at an affordable price, unique architectural details are incorporated into each house, to keep them from becoming cookie-cutter presentations," says Wolfe.

Rehabilitated houses are put on the market for sale either at or below their appraised value, says Wolfe, reminding that the nonprofit agency makes no profit off home sales. Recouping what was put into the home and putting that money back into a continuous cycle of rehabilitating more homes is the simple goal.

In addition to renovating homes, DASH builds new homes from the ground-up, including 22 constructed in Hillside Cottages, a compact neighborhood designed especially for elderly residents within the larger Hillside community.