Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority changes name to Raise Up

LORAIN — The county's housing agency will operate under a new name and brand moving forward. The Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority changed its name to Raise Up, officially launching its new website and logo today. CEO Judith Carlin said the public housing authority's role is larger than its name suggests as it can be a real estate developer and community advocate. The LMHA branding did not fully capture its capacity or vision to move the areas it serves forward, she said. After contracting with Michigan-based Gud Marketing on the rebranding effort, the organization found its new voice, Carlin said. The estimated $50,000 contract with Gud Marketing, paid out of non-federal funds, covered LMHA's redesigned logo and name change, as well as an overhaul to its website. Carlin and Chief Operating Officer Gale Sayers Proby hope the change helps boost its ability to garner philanthropic support. "We realized presenting ourselves as a public housing authority … was not sending the urgency, passion, commitment or capacity that we have to more things forward," Carlin said. "We also feel that the rebranding will help us as we reach out not only to our local philanthropic partners, but to national philanthropic partners." Reaching out for philanthropic support is not just for Raise Up, Carlin and Sayers Proby said, but for its fellow nonprofit partners. As LMHA, the agency wrote a grant to benefit the Lorain County Urban League and El Centro de Servicios Sociales. The funds from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation were something LMHA could not apply for, but the entire community could benefit from if it came to Lorain County, the pair said. Similarly, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-backed grant for urban agriculture that the housing agency applied for before the name change is not necessarily in the wheelhouse of providing safe, clean housing to Lorain County residents, Carlin said. But the grant, if awarded, would benefit the agency's residents and the community as a whole by bringing an urban agriculture program to East 28th Street in the Southside Gateway project corridor. "That's not directly impacting our residents, it's impacting that South Lorain neighborhood where we would create an urban agricultural hub and bring training from Lorain County Community College and Oberlin College," Sayers Proby said. Carlin added, "Our goal, first and foremost, we are a provider of affordable housing ... but the second prong of that is we want to be a better community partner." Alongside the agency's name change it created Raise Housing Development Corp. to act as a development arm of Raise Up. The corporation will be able to take non-federal money to reinvest in the creation of affordable housing, Sayers Proby said. Federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will still pay for housing programs like subsidies, but the real estate development arm hopes to allow the agency to be more independent from federal funding for its other development projects. Eventually the signage across the agency's 10 multi-family properties in Amherst, Elyria, Lorain and Oberlin will receive new signage with the updated name. In the interim, Raise Up will place temporary yard signs outside the properties and each resident will receive a door hanger notifying them of the change. The name change will not impact the services or subsidies residents receive, but Carlin and Sayers Proby hope it helps reduce the stigma that may surround its properties and renters. "In reality, we are a multi-family housing provider, the same way any other multi-family housing provider," Carlin said. "The people who live with us are people who work, pay their taxes this is a service we provide to the community, but our renters are just like every other renter." Sayers Proby agreed, "We want to help people move up and out. That is what the name is (about)." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.