Talking about Tamaqua

On January 23, 2012, Loreal Mallett from The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development interviewed Micah Gursky, director of the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, a Rural LISC Partner CDC in the borough of Tamaqua in rural eastern Pennsylvania.  Micah works full-time as development director for St. Luke’s Miners Memorial Hospital, a small community hospital with about 45 beds in the nearby borough of Coaldale. 

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

[Micah:] I grew up in Tamaqua, and, when I returned from college, I wanted to make a difference in a place that’s very important to me, my hometown.

I started in 1995 with working with the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, not because it was the thing to do but because we were so desperate. Tamaqua has, over many decades, lost more than half of its population, has a chronically high unemployment rate, and we have a lot of issues. So comprehensive community development was really not by choice. We sort of had to do everything.

Rural LISC welcomes a new CDC partner, Rural Housing Development Corporation (RHDC), headquartered in Provo, Utah.  Under the direction of Brad Bishop, RHDC helps to create affordable housing in seven counties in north-central Utah. 

From their website:  Rural Housing Development Corporation (RHDC) was initially created as a non-profit arm for the Housing Authority of Utah County (HAUC) to address affordable housing issues in rural Summit, Utah and Wasatch Counties.  RHDC incorporated with the state of Utah in November 1998, and soon thereafter went out on its own as it was designated by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO).  More.

Read the latest news from Rural LISC Partner CDCs.