Complex issues often require complex solutions. 

My husband, Jim, and I have been living in our home for nearly 10 years. It’s an old house built in the 1920s, and there is a list of repairs that would likely circle the whole block if it were all written down—everything from windows to paint to full-kitchen rehab. It’s got “good bones,” as they say.  But life with school-aged children and full-time jobs creates a busy schedule, and these repairs are expensive, so they haven’t been able to happen at once. And even some of those that we did fix when we first moved in are now in need of updates again as a decade has passed. 

I often think about community development work as being like maintaining a home. There are so many different projects that need to be addressed, but if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. A wrecking ball or sledgehammer can bust it all down really quickly, but it takes so much more time to build and repair than it does to destroy something. 

The Wayne County Community Foundation has been partnering with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia since 2021, when we participated, along with multiple other local community partners, in a cohort learning experience called Reinventing Our Communities. This program was focused on addressing equity in our community and in communities across the country. It was a catalyst for the Wayne Tomorrow! Housing Task Force’s updated Housing Needs Assessment, which was done in 2023. 

This created a long to-do list for our community to reference in order to address housing needs in Wayne County, but as at the Jennings House, we can’t possibly tackle all of the projects at once—there isn’t enough money or time. 

So, how do we go about deciding what to do first? Well, that’s complicated. We have to look at what funding is available, what infrastructure is in place, what the community is interested in seeing AND which population is most vulnerable and needs to be a priority. We can’t just pick and choose on our own—we need to work collectively to address the issues. 

We’re continuing to partner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to host listening sessions in our community with stakeholders close to the issues. We were thrilled to welcome their new president/CEO, Anna Paulson, to Honesdale on September 22 to talk about senior housing in particular, and share some of the great headway we’ve already made, and also some of the barriers and challenges we still need to overcome. The Philadelphia Fed does a tremendous amount of research, and we’re grateful for their willingness to hear from small communities like ours in Wayne County and get to the root of the issues that people face across the region. 

Complex problems often require complex solutions. The Wayne County Community Foundation doesn’t have the assets to fix all of the challenges in Wayne County on our own—we never will. But we can operate as the “good bones” of a house, so that we can work together to figure out which project we’re going to tackle next. We can’t do this work on our own, but luckily we don’t have to.  This is a community filled with people ready to pull up their sleeves, work collaboratively despite differences, and move forward together. 

Want to learn more about the Wayne County Community Foundation? Visit www.waynefoundation.org. 

Ryanne Jennings is the president/CEO of the Wayne County Community Foundation.