Are you looking for ways to make your home safer or get support with housing costs? Brothers Redevelopment has been serving the Colorado Springs community for years, offering a variety of programs to help residents make essential home improvements.
Jason McCullough, Director of Home Modification and Repair Programs at Brothers Redevelopment, shares insights into the organization’s mission, and the services they offer – including home repairs, accessibility modifications, and housing counseling. He also explains how they’re helping seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income households live more safely and independently. From free home modification services to community events like the annual Paint-A-Thon, Brothers Redevelopment is committed to making a lasting impact.
Colorado Housing Connection Hotline: 303-685-4225
Colorado Housing Connect Line: 1-844-926-6632
Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude – whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer.
Transcript
CYNTHIA MARGIOTTA, HOST:
For those of us who are looking to stay in our homes, maybe a couple extra years, this might be a good one to listen to. We have Brothers Redevelopment coming to visit us and they will tell us some ideas that might be of help to you to stay in your home.
VOICEOVER
This is Peak Community Studio 809 podcast.
MARGIOTTA
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. This is Aging with Altitude, a program striving to provide answers, assistance, and advocacy for us elders through the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. We’re coming to you from the Studio 809 Community Podcast Studio at The Next Us, a professional cooperative environment for small businesses in downtown Colorado Springs.
I’m your host, Cynthia Margiotta, a geriatric social worker and volunteer with the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging and CEO of the P.E.A.R.L.S. Program of Colorado and All About Dignity. Jason McCullough, a long time member of the Brothers Redevelopment team with impressive 10 years spending 17 years, is joining us today from Brothers Redevelopment. He is a field tech, and he started there and in 2007.
JASON McCULLOUGH:.
Started as a field tech, yes.
MARGIOTTA:
Started as a field tech.Jason has cultivated an unparalleled expertise in overseeing our home rehabilitation programs, serving as the director for home modification and repair programs.
Jason is responsible for maintaining compliance with municipal and foundation grant partnerships, managing all home modification and repair staff at Denver and Colorado Springs offices. Thank you for joining us today, Jason.
McCULLOUGH:
Thank you, thanks for having me.
MARGIOTTA:
We’re very glad you’re here. I’m been wanting to learn more about your program for several years.
McCULLOUGH:
Great.
MARGIOTTA:
So my first question, how did Brothers Redevelopment start? How did that whole idea start?
McCULLOUGH:
Sure. Well, it was started in 1971. Officially there were four, kind of community leaders, faith leaders, actually. They were the joke in Brothers is when 2 Catholics, a Mennonite and a Lutheran go to a bar, they start a nonprofit organization, right? So it was four leaders: Joe Jerone, Manny Martinez, Don Schilling and Robert Magnus, started Brothers.
They saw needs in their community. It was mostly on the West side of Denver when it first started. They kind of started the block party idea, or they were part of that. So they get volunteers to go work block to block with older homeowners or homeowners that were low income, or people that just needed some help. And people would like fix the fence, and it was kind of like a week-long process and then you’d have a party at the end of it.
And that grew into getting some funds to buy materials and then getting funds to get a vehicle to transport materials, and it kind of grew organically from that. In the 80s we started, officially, I think 1978, they started the paint-a-thon officially. And then in 1980 they started as an actual, I mean it really, really got rolling, much more formalized. In ’81, we became a state Medicaid provider and it’s kind of grown from there.
So it started with community action and then grew into filling housing needs, so got into development. We purchased the old Edgewater High School and converted that into low income, that’s where our main offices are. So it’s got five stories of low income senior housing above it, and then our office is on the the garden level. And then we still have the old high school gymnasium for events and different things that the community wants to throw. And then we’ve grown that, I think we now have now like 30 properties we own or manage from Weld County all the way down into Denver, surrounding area there.
MARGIOTTA:
And so you have apartments then?
McCULLOUGH:
So that side of the street, I’m not on that side of the street that much. But at Brothers Property Management we owned, we developed. So we just built Valor on the Fax that was finished a year, almost two years now ,and that’s on East Colfax, that’s like 75 units or something like that, and it’s specifically for folks with traumatic brain injury. So it’s the first of its kind, permanent supportive housing for folks with a traumatic brain injury. It’s in partnership with the Brain Injury Alliance of Colorado. So it’s the first of its kind of the nation, and then it’s targeted folks that need housing that have this injury, and then offers counseling and support services. And so a lot of those folks were coming right off the street. So it’s a way to house people that were unhoused before.
MARGIOTTA:
What kind of brain injuries do you include?
McCULLOUGH
That’s a medical, diagnosed brain injury. Apparently over 60% of folks that are unhoused have a traumatic brain injury, whether that’s from an accident or something that happened when they were unhoused. But it’s an issue, because it’s an actual physical injury that affects your behavior and your ability to think. So, it can be challenging, but that’s one of those.
So yeah, most of our properties are either for older adults, low income families. This one’s for folks with brain injuries. We’re working on one now for folks coming out of the justice system. Because that’s a rough road. If you come out of the justice system, they give you like 200 bucks and it’s like, see you later.
So we’re trying to figure out a way to kind of nip homelessness issues before they happen, and that’s kind of what my department, the Home Modification Repair Department, does. We work on existing housing to try to keep people in their homes, so we avoid especially older adult homelessness. But you know, homelessness connected to low income residents.
MARGIOTTA:
Right, right. Well, like, I happen to know, like seizures, first time seizures, victims, you know, over 60 population. Is something like first time seizures, 15% of seizures
McCULLOUGH:
Oh wow, I didn’t know that.
MARGIOTTA:
Is over 60 and it’s, it’s pretty hard on folks. That would be considered a brain injury?
McCULLOUGH:
I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m not on that, I’m in housing. We just keep the roof on their head.
MARGIOTTA:
I’m clicking into that population there and I’m sorry.
McCULLOUGH:
My big stat is people in their 60s, income level will drop the most. And that’s where we see the most need, you know, cause, now if you’re deciding on medication, food or hot water; medication, food or the power; medication food or my front porch fell down; what do you do right?
MARGIOTTA:
Right. And you make it a little easier for folks.
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah. So all our, we’re one of the largest, as far as I know, largest subsidized home rehab programs in the state. And so all our services are fully subsidized. There’s nothing we do that would cause a bill to go to one of our clients.
MARGIOTTA:
Wow, so it’s free.
McCULLOUGH:
It’s free. Yeah, we don’t put that on flyers. People tend to walk away from flyers that say free. I know I do.
MARGIOTTA:
Oh really? I’m gonna take it off my flyer.
MCCULLOUGH:
We talk about subsidized services or, you know, you may qualify, stuff like that. But yeah, our services are all completely subsidized. So there’s an application for everything, because of that. But if you’re willing to sit down and do the application, make sure you’re eligible, we will do as much as we can.
And then also bringing kind of the Brothers family of services, because we have a whole bunch of other service offerings, whether it’s aging and place services for older adults that need resource management and assistance, or housing counseling, or rental or mortgage assistance. Anything connected with housing, we’ll probably have our fingers in it.
Wow. I need to get to know you guys more. I work with a lot of low income folks.
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah, yeah, that’s our people.
MARGIOTTA:
Right. So what kind of growth and services and programs have you seen during the time there?
McCULLOUGH:
Well, a lot. When I came on, you mentioned I came on as a field tech back in 2007, and was just looking for a change, was tired of kind of for-profit construction. But that was kind of the trades I’d gotten into, and Brothers just seemed like a good fit. They were doing good work and they were busy. When I started, we were just doing ,kind of Medicaid home modification projects and a few little, you know, we had small grants, we do group home modifications, ramp homes, for like group homes for folks with cognitive issues or something like that. But they were kind of just project-to-project.
We started with the City of Thornton, I think was our first one, right after I started with a community development block grant partnership. So, if you’re a city or county and you’re an entitlement, they call it an entitlement community, you can pull funds directly from HUD for CDBG and then use those for street lights, sidewalks, you know, a whole bunch of stuff. It’s designed that way, right? To help communities sustain themselves. So a lot of that, the communities were started, especially with older housing neighborhoods, they were starting to see, hey, we need to invest in our housing stock to keep these neighborhoods, reduce blight, right? So they did that, but they didn’t have staff to do that. We did, and we were able to understand, because of the other stuff we did with housing, we understood the administrative burden and the requirements and restrictions, and we were used to following a lot of different various rules. So we jumped in and and that’s really the jumping off point for my department.
We’ve grown to, now we have, I want to say 10 or 11 depending on what agreements we have in right now, CDBG programs alone, and our coverage areas from Weld County, Boulder all the way down to the Springs, Teller and Pueblo. Then we’ve got our first state program starting this year that will be statewide. So it’ll be a statewide rehab program.
MARGIOTTA:
Nice.
McCULLOUGH:
So quite a bit of growth, from just being a Denver centric, trucks and we had a small garage and let’s go do the good work to what we’re doing now.
MARGIOTTA:
Wonderful. Well, we’re glad you’re here. We have a lot of housing needs here.
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah, we’ve been here for a while, actually. So, for the Pikes Peak area, we have several programs here. We partner with City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County. And the Pikes Peak AAA, which is the area agency on aging. You can’t say that fast or you will stumble.
MARGIOTTA:
Yes, I can. Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging.
McCULLOUGH:
There it is, yes. Nicely done. That’s one of the long ones.
MARGIOTTA:
I know.
McCULLOUGH:
So we partnered with them and then some foundational support, which is very needed and always welcome. It’s literally half of our volume is this area. We do a lot of work here. There’s waiting lists everywhere in Pikes Peak. We’re in other areas I’m trying to find interest, here, we’re just trying to manage a volume. So it’s a very busy place.
MARGIOTTA:
Can you tell us a couple of places here in the Springs specifically?
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah, I mean down for El Paso – the Plains area, they don’t get a lot of attention – so El Paso County covers everything kind of in El Paso County around Colorado Springs. Their program is the CDBG program and it covers unincorporated El Paso County. So there will be some Springs addresses, but they’re technically in El Paso County. We’ll go all the way out to, I’ve met with folks in Calhan, Peyton. We’ve done projects there. So a lot of those more remote areas. And then down into Fountain, we’ve met with folks there, done projects there.
In the City of Colorado Springs, it’s the kind of the obvious place. They have fire maps, but it’s south and east sides, lower income, older neighborhoods in Colorado Springs. So a lot of that, that’s where we work. Most of our residents are older adults because they fit the income requirements for CDBG, which is 80% of the average median income, and you have to own your home, you have to be current on your mortgage or have it paid off, and then you have to have homeowners insurance. So that’s to fit that model. Most of older adults fit that because they don’t have the ability to go out and change their income level, they’re on a reduced or fixed income, and they’ve owned their home for quite some time. So that’s kind of who we target a lot because that’s who comes to us a lot and that’s a lot of homeowners in need out there right now is, is that kind of demographic, in general. I mean we all, I’m sure you talk about the aging demographic here is it’s
MARGIOTTA:
Ohh, just every time.
McCULLOUGH:
Right. Yeah. It’s just front page news. It’s breaking news. Right. Yeah. So that’s our people. And we just try to help them stay in their homes longer with more comfort and independence and obviously safety and functioning systems.
MARGIOTTA:
Nice. I like that. What are the services you provide for residents in need in home modification and repair?
McCULLOUGH:
In home modification repair, we cover the big four, or is our focus which is home safety. And then accessibility and barrier removal, so that’s your ramps, grab bars, lift systems, anything that for folks that have maybe had an injury or have a chronic illness where they’ve had reduced ambulation, so they know need a walker or they’re moving to a wheelchair, a lot of that work. And then deferred systems maintenance, so that’s your furnaces, water heaters, roofs, sewers, stuff that wears out in the house and is very expensive to replace, right? And if you don’t have it, the house becomes eventually uninhabitable, right? We don’t want condemned, that’s the blight, you know, reduction. And then aging home rehab, which is kind of the, that’s the kind of catch all. So most of our houses are, I’d say, probably between 1955 and 1975 in age when they were built and. And so if they have iron pipe plumbing that’s going to wear out, that’s a home safety issue because that can cause some pretty harmful effects. If they go into demo themselves, they can expose themselves to lead-based paint. So we do all the compliance and test for lead-based paint. We now test for radon because Colorado’s a red zone for radon, so we make sure folks have radon mitigation. We have to say no skylights, no sprinklers, right? So it’s not stuff that’s going to just for this sake of, ‘I’d like new windows because these new windows look cool.’ If you have a broken or missing window, sure, we’ll take a look at that. But we really focus on just making sure the house is functional, safe and accessible. So that’s our, that’s our big four, that’s we work on.
Brothers, on the other hand, we have a whole bunch of different departments. The other one that’s really active here in Colorado Springs or the Pikes Peak area, is our volunteer departments paint-a-thon program. And that was started in ’78, right after, we’re the two oldest departments in the in the organization. They partner with around, I think the average is like, 2,500 volunteers a year here. We hire really awesome college kids, train them up on lead-based paint and how to work with volunteers and safety. And then we perform about 100 to 120 house exterior house painting projects every season. And that helps draw attention to isolated seniors in the community, cleans up their yard, we do like yard cleanup, exterior clutter removal, we paint the home, so that weatherizes the home on the exterior, beautifies it, and then makes it a much more viable and relevant property in the neighborhood. And it really, we usually we try to find community members to do that. So it really connects communities, it’s a really good program. They actually just hit, last year we had the big party, they hit one million volunteer hours since the inception of the paint-a-thon, so it was a really big deal. If you think about, if you’re a volunteer and you go on a Saturday and you help paint a house for four hours and you did that, people did that enough to rank up a million of those hours since 1978.
MARGIOTTA:
Wow. That’s great.
McCULLOUGH:
So we do we do that program here, we have staff here, dedicated staff for that. Our housing counseling services are active here as well. We do first time homebuyer classes, and if you complete that you can get like a matching rebate for a down payment. We do housing and counseling, just in general. We’re a HUD certified housing counseling firm, so we can do that.
We have the Colorado Housing Connects Hotline, which is a website and call center that’s statewide as well for anything housing. So it’s senior issues, renters rights, ownership questions, connections to all our services, referrals for other services that we may not be able to offer, but we can refer you to. So any of that, and that’s statewide, we’ve got navigators all over the place in Colorado for that.
MARGIOTTA:
You’re a huge program.
McCULLOUGH:
We’re bigger than people think. Yeah, we’re definitely, we’re no longer little Brothers. It’s not the little Brothers of days of old.
MARGIOTTA:
You’re not little Brothers, you’re Brothers Redevelopment. I get it.
McCULLOUGH:
We have an HR department now. So you know you’re big time when you have an HR department.
MARGIOTTA:
That is big time.
McCULLOUGH:
Yes, and Melissa’s great. She’s listening to this, Melissa, you’re awesome.
MARGIOTTA:
There you go, Melissa. You get two points here. So how does, and I’m gonna ask this at the end as well, for people to write down this information, but how do people get in touch with you all? You have so many wonderful programs. Is there one hub to contact?
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah, I’d say that the easiest way is to go to the Colorado Housing Connects Hotline and that’s, I mean, I put well, you can’t see this, but I put the number on the back of my cards, and everything we all do. Because they’ll get you directly to our services. We have a direct line for like home modification repair. Do you want me to say the number?
MARGIOTTA:
Sure, please, more than once.
McCULLOUGH:
The direct line for HMR, which is home modification repair services, is 303-685-4225. And that will connect you with our housing support specialist who does all our intake. She’s great. If you’re in the Pikes Peak area, she can get you to our Colorado Springs offices as well. And we’ll do the intake there as well. But we can meet people at their homes if they’re having issues with pulling documents, we can help them with the application process, I know it’s very confusing sometimes to go find the deed to a house you’ve owned for 30 years, like where is that? Which box? So we can, as much as you’re comfortable with receiving help, we can help you with that. So that’s the number there, 303-685-4225 or the Housing Collect, the CHC line, the Colorado Housing Connects hotline, which is 1-844-926-6632. So those are the best ways. You can go to our website. We have a lot of pages on the website for all the different programs we offer and the departments we have, and that’s at brothersredevelopment.org. If you contact your local government, they’ve probably heard of us. They can connect you with us as well, especially if you contact like economic development or human services. We’re out there. We don’t spend a lot of money on marketing because we’re a nonprofit and you don’t get a lot of money for marketing. So it’s mostly, flyers and libraries and active center events and fairs. The stuff where you see people, right?
MARGIOTTA:
Right. Vendor tables.
McCULLOUGH:
Exactly. We’ve got table cloths.
MARGIOTTA:
So you shared a little bit about who you serve and our main purpose is working with seniors in this podcast. But you also help people who have disabilities.
McCULLOUGH:
Yes, yes, absolutely. Most of our programs are not specifically, they aren’t required. Some of them are, you need to be over 60, right? So like Pikes Peak, the 8 AAA, we work with DRCOG, which is the Denver Regional Council of Governments and same, almost identical programs. So that’s 60 over. But a lot of our programs, especially if it’s, you know, government or federally funded, those are income qualified. So it’s just the ownership and the income level. So yes, we will definitely work with lower income families as well, but there’s usually disability. We’re working on a ramp system right now in north Denver trying to get funding for a ramp for a family with a child who is fully wheelchair bound. They don’t have a ramp right now, so they’re just
MARGIOTTA:
Picking her up.
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah, picking them up every day, every time. They don’t even have handicap parking where they live. So we’re working with the HOA, and I’ll say that it’s been a good experience. They’re open to it. So we’re going to try and set up a handicapped parking near their unit and then get a ramp in and so on and so forth. But yeah, so we do work with that. Sometimes you have to be creative. But yeah, our target audience, our main focus is older adults for sure.
MARGIOTTA:
Well, thank you for helping the disabilities folks as well. Both of those are major for me, in my opinion. Who are your support partners in the Pikes Peak region? I know the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging, right?
McCULLOUGH:
Yes. So they really help us. They’ve funded us this year. We had a pilot program last year with the state for a program called Capable, which is at Johns Hopkins developed program. And it works with older adults or folks with a disability to help them identify goals for better living, safer, better living in their homes and then and then we have a team of occupational therapists and nurses that come in and meet with them. And then based on those meetings, they’re non-medical meetings, but they kind of walk you through like, OK, what are your issues, what are your goals? And it could be I want to be able to cook breakfast without pain. I want to garden in my backyard again. I want to take this dog for a walk again, you know. So they’ll work with them on behaviors, changes in your schedule, whatever it may be, changes in your household. And then we’ll go in and do modifications for safety based on those goals. So they’ve helped fund us for that program, which has been huge because that’s really targeted on older adults, and has helped us keep, literally keep people in their homes having to not go to assisted living on more than a few occasions, we’ve kept people from going to assisted living through that program. And it’s a low investment as far as dollars in the house, but it’s really impactful because it’s a four-to-five-month project. The person’s meeting with occupational therapists, they’re meeting with the nurses, they’re meeting with our staff. So they’re kind of pulled out of isolation. There’s a spotlight on their experience and then they work their goals and they have to be motivated and we have some really good outcomes there.
So the AAA funded that. We’ve got, obviously, I mentioned the City of Colorado Springs is a big one. El Paso County’s huge, they’re a great partner. And then got some funding from, some, we’ve had some funding through some various private grants in the past, Myron Stratton, we’ve received in the past. We’ve got one right now, really good impactful program, with the Colorado Springs Health Foundation. That covers, that is just, it’s what I call like my back pocket fund. So if we have something that has an overage or there’s what we call scope creep, like we get in and you, you go to do one thing and you find out ‘Oh to fix this, we gotta do this, this and this, we don’t have funding for this, this and this.’ That fund can really help us with that, and also in areas where that just don’t fit in any of the existing program models we have. So it’s a really good kind of safety net for the programs we serve.
MARGIOTTA:
Right. Those little things that come up.
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah. And it’s, I mean, especially dealing with older homes, older residents, that is just, that’s pretty much all the time. So yeah, it’s very helpful. But those are our main funders here. And then, we love donations like anybody else. But considering who we serve, we don’t ask too much. We give the opportunity, but we don’t expect too much.
MARGIOTTA:
Right. Most of us seniors, somewhat of a limited budget. What are the most common requests that you receive when people reach out to you, what is the most two or three common ones?
McCULLOUGH:
Actually, we track that very closely, very closely. So, our two largest right now are home safety related and accessibility. That’s because we’re seeing older adults. So people are living longer and therefore they want to be independent longer. So we’re seeing a lot more requests for minor to medium level accessibility modifications, so maybe extra rails in the house, grab bars in the bathroom, handheld showers, tub benches, maybe like high profile or more high contrast transition strips from flooring so you’re not tripping on your flooring, you see that better. And then home safety and that could be everything from like outlets that don’t work, that are sparking to, you know, leaking faucets, that are things that could damage the house and make it uninhabitable. Or falling gutters that create ice dams in the winter, then you slip and fall when you come out of your house, that’s a safety issue. So we see a lot more of that.
Our two big trades right now, we’re seeing our plumbing and HVAC. That’s part seasonal, right now we’re coming out of the cold zone. So people are, when we had that cold snap a couple months back, we got a lot of furnace calls that really upped that up. But plumbing is a big one, just because older homes, plumbing wears out just like, systems in human beings run out too.
MARGIOTTA:
Right?
McCULLOUGH:
So yeah, a lot of plumbing calls.
MARGIOTTA:
Would you put in a heated driveway for me?
McCULLOUGH:
Yeah. Well, I mean, no.
MARGIOTTA:
I have a north facing driveway. I’m just joking.
McCULLOUGH:
We’d probably provide you with some salt or something. I don’t know if we can do heated driveways.
MARGIOTTA:
Oh well.
McCULLOUGH:
That might be under skylights and sprinklers.
MARGIOTTA:
I’m sorry.
McCULLOUGH:
That’s OK.
MARGIOTTA:
So what other services come along with help from the home modification and repair department?
McCULLOUGH:
Well, just referrals I guess to other programs. The other stuff we do is refer to other programs outside of Brothers that may help you. We have a few partnerships with cities that have like a code compliance program. So if you’re having issues with your fence falling over, we can send you to them and they’ll get you help there. Anything we can do, our AIP services, help people with enrolling in SNAP, making sure they’re getting all their Medicaid or Medicare benefits, making sure they understand their rights and what resources are available.
We try to be a resource center. Once we have someone as a client. We try to be a trustable resource. It helps that we’re connected to cities and towns and counties, because they are a trustable resource. And then try to find what we can, when we can.
MARGIOTTA:
Great. Wonderful. And with that, I want to ask you this last question, again. As for the contact information for people who have been listening, and then want to run off and get a pen and paper, yeah, so that they can give that information too and maybe give you a call.
McCULLOUGH:
Sure, sure. So for information on housing services, we offer through Brothers Redevelopment. I would recommend you contact Colorado Housing Connects at 1-844-926-6632. They can also be reached online at coloradohousingconnects.org. And then for Brothers Redevelopment, for my programs, the home modification repair programs, for help with your existing home, I would call 303-685-4225, or go to brothersredevelopment.org and just click on the home modification and repair page. You’ll have some stories there. There’s kind of all the services we offer. We list a bunch of our partners and how to enroll .
MARGIOTTA:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today. I’ve learned a lot about your program. I really do appreciate it. And folks, it’s just one more way to stay at our homes, and you know how we all want to stay there as long as possible. And I appreciate your time. Thank you.
McCULLOUGH:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.