100-Year-Old House:
A Housing Justice Conference & 125th Anniversary Celebration

The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County & The HUUB 35 Cleveland St, Orange, NJ, 07050

Saturday, November 5, 2016

• 9am: Coffee & Building Tours
• 10am: Planning for Justice – Plenary with invited speakers and audience Q & A
• 12pm: Anniversary Luncheon & Honoree Awards
• 1pm: Connecting & Creating – Workshops, walking tours, and community building discussions
• 4pm: Cocktails & Social Hour

How do we preserve the city for everyone?

Orange is full of century-old houses that are in desperate need of investment and repairs. Entire blocks of older buildings show the signs of age and deferred maintenance, getting labeled as shabby and blighted. At the same time, the city is embracing Transit Oriented Development, increasing the cost of living and deepening the hardship of income constrained citizens.

With this is mind, the question we are asking at the 100-Year-Old House is, “how do we integrate new and existing housing to meet the needs of the community while at the same time allowing those who have lived and thrived here to remain and prosper?”

100-Year-Old House will bring neighbors together to discuss the state of housing in Orange, looking at both the aging building stock and the changing affordability of the city. Speakers will share insights from their diverse experiences about the important role affordable housing plays in healthy communities and how to preserve and expand it. The invited speakers are:

• Michele Racioppi from the New Jersey Historic Trust
• Molly Rennie from the United Way of Northern New Jersey’s ALICE Project
• Ana Baptista from The New School and the Ironbound Community Corporation
• Molly Kaufman from the University of Orange

We will then celebrate First UU’s 125th Anniversary and honor three individuals who have been involved in housing rights and advancing social justice around Orange and the region. Honorees are:

• Craig Hirshberg, former Executive Director of the UU Legislative Ministry of New Jersey;
• Andrea Lerner, Congregational Life Consultant and outgoing Metro New York UU District Executive;
• Pat Morrissey, Executive Director of Housing And Neighborhood Development Services (HANDS), Inc. in Orange.

Workshops and walking tours of the neighborhood will follow the anniversary and awards lunch. Built around Asset Based Community Development ideas the afternoon will focus on what assets exists in Orange and how we can build on them to address the housing issues discussed earlier in the day. We will close the conference with a reception and cocktail hour.

The needs of our old buildings and economic pressures from new development are directly related to the quality of life in cities like Orange. This conference will provide an inclusive venue to think about solutions to both. With these ideas in mind, we invite you to join us on Saturday, November 5th, 2016, at 35 Cleveland St, Orange, NJ, 07050. The event is being organized by the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County, The HUUB, and the University of Orange. It is supported in part by the Fund for Unitarian Universalist Social Responsibility. No fee will be charged, but donations are welcome for the continuing work of First UU and the HUUB.

If you intend to come to the 100 Year-Old House Conference/First UU’s 125th Anniversary, we ask that you RSVP at your earliest convenience, by e-mail to either the office (info [at] essexuu [dot] org) or Charlie Wirene (OrangeHUUB [at] gmail [dot] com). We would like to get as accurate a number of those coming as possible. For more information use one of those same e-mails, or call 973-674-0010.

100-Year-Old-House flyer (PDF)