In April, Verde Landscape Crew Supervisor Mateo Fletes celebrated 11 years working at Verde! We cannot thank him enough for the mentorship and passion he brings to the Verde team.

Verde and Enhabit share goals of advancing Affordable Small Homes, also known as Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s), as one strategy to address the region’s affordable housing crisis. Enhabit is an Oregon non-profit dedicated to energy efficiency and, more recently, ADU’s. To help accelerate the development of affordable ADU programs envisioned by citywide community-based collaborators, Enhabit is providing its resources, designs, and engagement tools to Verde, a leader in catalyzing equity-first community building strategies.

Everyone should have access to the tools and information they need in order to make the changes they want to see in their communities.

“When you attend programs [like Lideres Verdes] you learn that you have a power. You have the power to organize more people and make changes for your community,” said Melecia Torres, a 2019 Lideres Verdes participant, “It’s called empowerment.”

This winter, neighborhood youth are learning to confront climate change and displacement in their community; and it all begins with a garden.

J’hane and Cierra hop on a yellow school bus with the other Multnomah Youth Corps (MYC) students once a week to join Verde and the Columbia Slough Watershed Council in building rain gardens on the properties of low-income homeowners.