Dogwood Health Trust recently invested in affordable housing initiatives in Haywood and Jackson counties by awarding a $872,671 grant to Mountain Projects.

Social services Agency Mountain Projects continues to be at the forefront of solving the affordable housing crisis in Haywood and Jackson counties. 

Five working families in Jackson County will have the chance to move into brand new homes once a project currently underway by Mountain Projects reaches its conclusion. 

Five families could find themselves in a brand new home in Sylva if a planned endeavor by Mountain Projects comes to fruition. 

Citing a slowdown in federal funding and a desire to run a regularly scheduled circulator route across Haywood County, Mountain Projects Transit Director Chuck Norris reached out to Haywood County commissioners for more fiscal flexibility and an advance on a county match. 

Mountain Projects, in conjunction with the Haywood County Health and Human Services Agency and the North Carolina Community Action Coalition, will hold an exercise designed to give participants a glimpse of what it’s like to be poor. 

Worries last month over the potential defunding of local social service agency Mountain Projects’ Obamacare Navigator program became real when the organization wasn’t selected for funding, but a solution has now emerged thanks to one of North Carolina’s largest private trusts. 

Jan Plummer is the Obamacare Navigator program coordinator at Mountain Projects, but probably not for much longer.

Unsurprisingly, after a three-year cooperative agreement expired Sept. 12, Mountain Projects wasn’t selected for re-funding of the Navigator program, which helps people sign up for health care coverage. 

A 4.4-acre parcel in the Allens Creek community could soon put a small dent in Haywood County’s affordable housing crisis, if negotiations between the owner and local human services agency Mountain Projects go well. 

Mountain Projects is now moving into a newly renovated building on Asheville Road in Waynesville, thanks in part to matching contributions of $150,000 that Jackson and Haywood counties approved in April.