Evergreen Habitat is thrilled to announce a gift of $2.5 Million from the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund at the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington. Ed and Dollie, during their lives, made it their mission to invest in this community in meaningful and transformational ways. This is a gift that truly embodies what it means to create a legacy, and here at Evergreen Habitat we believe in creating legacies. Affordable homeownership gives each and every homebuyer a chance to create a legacy for their own family. The more of our neighbors who are able to purchase decent homes at a price they can afford, the greater our collective community legacy grows.

Since our incorporation in 1991, Evergreen Habitat for Humanity, alongside a vast community of supporters and champions, has been pushing forward with one vision in mind: creating a world where everyone has a decent place to live. This vision brought us to where we are today and fuels the growth of Evergreen Habitat’s program, bringing people together to build a legacy through the generation impact of homeownership. 

Ed and Dollie were dedicated to doing their part to ensure generations of our neighbors are able to live rich and fulfilling lives, which is exactly what this gift to Evergreen Habitat means. Michael Lynch, son of Ed and Dollie, shares about the donation,

“We couldn’t be more pleased with Evergreen Habitat for Humanity embracing the community land trust model and committing to delivering over 100 permanent, organically affordable homes in Southwest Washington. We hope they are so successful with this, that in another four years, they will aspire to do even more.”

As we work through our current projects serving a total of 51 families and supported by a prior gift from the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, we must celebrate these successes and begin to look at the future, as we know there are so many more in our community in need of affordable housing.

Evergreen Habitat is currently at a moment in which we have an opportunity to significantly increase our impact here in Clark County—an impact which will be felt for generations to come. This donation from the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund provides the foundation needed to serve another 100 families through affordable homeownership over the next 4 years. This $2.5 Million allows us to invest in some of our most necessary, and most costly foundational items in order to create this impact. It allows us to increase our internal capacity to serve more families, to purchase property to build more homes, to complete infrastructure development on raw land, and other items that are sometimes unseen within the homeownership process.

“Evergreen Habitat has been committed to finding solutions for families experiencing housing instability for over three decades, but the current conditions make our work more challenging and more critical than ever before. This gift allows us to remain nimble and innovative as we look to the future of our homeownership program. Recently, moving our model towards permanent affordability has allowed us to ensure our community will always have affordable homeownership options. Our work is not only about serving our current homebuyer families, but also about planning for the future generations of our community. Thank you to Michael and the Ed & Dollie Lynch Fund for investing in this work alongside us.”

-Josh Townsley, Evergreen Habitat CEO

This provides an amazing start to begin creating permanent housing solutions for our next 100 families, including those who will make their homes within our next housing development of up to 36 homes. Details of our next project will be shared soon. We have so much work ahead of us but with this foundation in place and our community by our side, we are so excited to get started. Will you join us in serving our next 100 families? Donate today to help create a legacy alongside the Lynch family and sign up for our newsletter to receive details on our next project as soon as it is announced