Release No. 10252005

Date: October 25, 2005                                                              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Romey Brooks, Public Relations
             L. Kent Adcock, Executive Director
             Habitat for Humanity of Frederick County, MD
             4 East Church Street
             Frederick, MD 21701

Phone: 301/846-0430 (Brooks) or 301/698-2449 (Habitat)
Fax: 301/846-9991 (Brooks) or 301/698-1697 (Habitat)
Email: romey.brooks@adelphia.net or director@frederickhabitat.org

Middletown Church Members Want to Build Habitat Home

“Church members in the Middletown area want to help solve the increasingly challenging problem of affordable housing by building a Habitat for Humanity home in the area,” said Rev. Mark Wakefield, pastor of Christ Reformed Church, Middletown. “We have volunteers, we have enthusiasm, we have community support and we have the backing of the Habitat organization in Frederick. But we have no project because we don't yet have land.”

Traditionally Habitat provides a lot and organizations, businesses, churches and individual volunteers rally to do the rest. While Habitat recently acquired three lots in Frederick, Brunswick and Thurmont, it does not have one in the Middletown Valley.
“But we know there is suitable land available in the area,” added Griff Garwood, one of
the ad hoc committee members. “And there is a little-known county ordinance that can be advantageous to the land owner, as well as providing the missing ingredient to this very worthy project,” he added.

This ordinance allows a property owner in an agricultural zoning district to subdivide and dedicate one lot containing an existing residence for affordable housing purposes. And the remaining property retains all subdivision rights permitted before the dedication occurred.

The ordinance further states that in all residential districts, except for the Mobile Home Park zone, a property owner with a parcel of twenty acres or more may dedicate up to five percent of the parcel along with the corresponding new zoning density for affordable housing purposes. The owner can still develop the remainder of the property to the full density which would have been allowed on the original parcel prior to the dedication.

Habitat of Frederick County has built or renovated 22 homes since its 1993 local chartering. It is finishing its twenty-third home on Silo Hill Court, Emmitsburg. The United Methodist Churches of the area, Mt. St. Mary’s University and Gettysburg College have been the major sponsors of the Emmitsburg project.

Recently the Citigroup Foundation and Freddie Mac gave Habitat a combined gift of $110,000 to build a twenty-fourth home on the newly-acquired land in Thurmont where groundbreaking occurred recently. The proposed Middletown home would be the twenty-fifth, coming just ten years after Habitat completed its first project on Bentz St., Frederick.

Prospective land donors or persons who know of potential land donors should call Rev. Wakefield (301-371-6610), Griff Garwood (301-371-9202) or Habitat Executive Director Kent Adcock (301-698-2449).

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