Welcome to Maysville Initiative, building a stronger community together.
Maysville Initiatives, Inc., was established in 1997 as a 501(C)(3) non – profit corporation. We have a volunteer Board of Directors and a full – time, volunteer Director / Resident Agent / Grant Writer. Maysville Initiatives has generated and located funding for innovative programs to assist low and middle income residents of Maysville and the surrounding area (Mason, Bracken, Fleming, Lewis & Robertson Counties in Kentucky and Brown & Adams Counties in Ohio). Our focus is on the economic and housing stability of individuals and families in our service area.
We are proud of our diverse programs addressing the economic and housing stability of individuals and families in our area. Two programs receive federal funds through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Our other programs do not receive federal or state funds. Each program, its funding and its challenges, is described in this site.
Maysville Initiatives works primarily with low and extremely low income individuals and families. We know clients in one of our programs all have annual incomes of $12,000 or less. Eighty percent or more of families in another program qualified for the local school district’s free or reduced lunch program last year.
Our programs are “hidden treasures” in our area. They could be replicated in other regions, to the benefit of many times the number of people we serve. We believe our programs address needs in a way that makes each a good investment in the larger picture.
- We nourish the minds and bodies of children during summer vacation, so they don’t start the new school year at a deficit.
- We break the cycle for homeless, disabled individuals, giving them rental assistance and life-skills training.
- We keep elderly, disabled individuals and couples living independently with our low-cost assistance; postponing or eliminating the one-way trip to the nursing home.
- We have created affordable housing without the tangle of federal red-tape. The project has been funded 100% locally.
Camp Discovery
Maysville Initiatives is responsible for Camp Discovery which provides a summer day camp program for approximately one hundred campers age 5 through 12 – eight hours a day, five days a week – during the school district’s summer vacation. This tremendous child care resource for local families is free and open to all who would like to attend. We provide breakfast and lunch to all campers – at no cost. Our “no-bullying” policy and a counselor-to-camper ratio of 1 to 10 insures that Camp Discovery is a safe place for campers.
Camp Discovery’s home base is Beechwood Park, in the “East End” of Maysville. This area has the most substandard housing units and is the most racially diverse. It has the most obvious drug and alcohol abuse problems. The Justice Department says that children in this kind of environment are more likely to be either the victim or perpetrator of a crime during unsupervised hours. Camp Discovery provides safety and supervision.
Supportive Services Aides
Six years ago Maysville Initiatives began providing aides for a HUD "Resident Opportunity for Self-Sufficiency" (ROSS) Grant to assist low-income elderly and/or disabled residents of Maysville's Housing Authority. The program has created local jobs and lowered Medicare/Medicaid costs for elderly clients by offering non-medical support to help them continue living independently rather than go to a nursing home.
We currently serve 120 low-income elderly and/or disabled clients. Some are able to take care of themselves at this point. Their "support" is weekly or monthly re-assessment visits. At the other extreme, approximately 30 clients are either housebound or otherwise physically disabled to the point that they are able to continue to live independently only if our non-medical, supportive services are available.
Permanent Housing for the Homeless
Maysville Initiatives has operated this HUD grant program for the last ten years, offering a full-time social worker and rental support to between ten and fourteen homeless, disabled persons (and their family). The cost of this program is $111,121/year. Maysville Initiatives leases housing from local landlords and provides that housing to eligible homeless individuals/families. Seventy percent (+/-) of our Permanent Housing Program clients are successful in achieving housing stability according to HUD performance standards.
The program teaches life skills such as budgeting, basic housekeeping and creating goals and objectives for a stable life. The social worker will assist clients with job searches and/or education, and insures that all clients have the mainstream benefits to which they are lawfully eligible
Bluff View Apartments
Maysville Initiatives has built and manages ten units of affordable housing for low and middle income individuals and couples at Bluff View Apartments in Maysville. Our housing project is all single-bedroom units. Our project is one of only a few in the nation that have been built without federal or state money. Our $362,000 mortgage is held by two local banks and is paid with rental income .
Whatever the rent when you move into your Bluff View apartment, that’s what your rent will be. The rent only increases when a new tenant signs a new lease.
KY HEARTH Grant
Maysville Initiatives received a $273,000 one-time “stimulus” grant through Kentucky Housing Corporation in 2009 for “Rapid Rehousing” of homeless persons and families, and stabilizing individuals and families who were “Precariously Housed”. In our grant application we promised to have the program active within five days of final approval. When approval came, we discovered there were more homeless and precariously housed persons and families in the Maysville area than we had realized. We made an intentional mid-course correction, and chose to help as many qualified clients as we could, for as long as we could. We were able to offer short-term assistance to close to 125 families for approximately six months. The grant program closed in April of 2010.
New Horizons
At some point, we would like to expand Camp Discovery to offer free child care and nutritional and academic support during other school vacation times and/or after school. (This would require an indoor facility.) In December of 2010, Maysville Initiatives was given 100 acres of land adjacent to Meadowview Regional Medical Center. The land is essentially farm land, but within the city limits of Maysville. If we can develop this property (involving a road and basic utilities – how many thousands of dollars???) we would consider: 1. Establishing a residential facility for adult autistics; 2. Building more locally-funded affordable housing, with a special emphasis on the elderly; 3. Creating a non-profit child care facility; 4. Working with partner agencies such as Comprehend, Inc. on projects to serve the disabled and frail elderly; 5. Offering space for a new business incubator and technology training center for adults. We plan to ask Lowe’s Home Improvement Store in Maysville to consider making Camp Discovery’s Beechwood Park site the focus of their 2012 community improvement grant ($20,000) to upgrade the shelter and playground facilities.