By Susan Smallheer, Brattleboro Reformer, Find original story on Brattleboro Reformer’s site with pictures of Christa and Susan at home.
PUTNEY — Christa Harty says matter-of-factly that living at the Windham Windsor Housing Trust’s Putney Landing housing complex has “saved my life.”
Harty, originally from Bellows Falls, and the mother of four children, said Putney Landing has been a great place for her to raise her three youngest children, 17, 14 and 13, and help herself heal from post traumatic stress disorder. She has two rescue dogs.
Harty, 40, has lived at Putney Landing since it opened in 2018, and now even her mother Veronica lives in her own unit in the complex of 18 apartments and townhouses, adding to a network of family support. She is enthusiastic about Putney Landing and its benefits – and how it is a quick walk to the rest of the village.
“Putney Landing has all this green space,” she says, taking a visitor on a tour of the lawns and paths surrounding the housing project. “There are plants, and plants on porches. I see robins all the time,” she said, “and woodpeckers and foxes.”
“I love my neighbors,” she said. “Our neighbors stand together. It’s like our own little world.”
This year the Housing Trust even installed small raised beds for those tenants who are interested in gardening, and Harty tends to her’s and a neighbor’s, growing some food and flowers.
There are occasional problems, she said. “But the good outweighs the bad.”
Harty said of the 18 apartments, 11 are filled with senior citizens, and she said there are five one-bedroom, 11 two-bedroom and two three-bedroom apartments, divided among three buildings constructed around a courtyard. She has one of the three-bedroom apartments. Like any apartment, tenants must have the first month’s rent, the last month’s rent and a security deposit, she explained.
Rents went up recently, she said, to $1,454 for her three-bedroom apartment, which includes heat, hot water, trash and plowing. “We all compost and recycle,” she said.
Putney Landing is all but invisible to people driving through the village or headed to Interstate 91. “We can’t hear the interstate or the road,” said Harty, who said she likes to be outside in the courtyard during the good weather.
As proof of the home-like atmosphere, Harty notes that of the 18 apartments, 12 are filled with original tenants.
At the BF Garage
About 15 miles north, at the Bellows Falls Garage, another Housing Trust property, Susan MacNeil says her third-story apartment gives her the peace of mind she was seeking.
“I just love the view, it’s a beautiful vista,” she said. “It feels like a hotel apartment.”
MacNeil has a one-bedroom apartment that looks out over The Island and the Bellows Falls train station, as well as Fall Mountain.
With her black appliances in her kitchen, she’s adopted a brown and grey color scheme for her home. She pays $850 a month, which includes heat and electricity, and she pays an extra $25 a month for a dedicated parking space in the building’s small parking lot off Canal Street.
Its almost central location in downtown Bellows Falls makes it easy to walk to businesses or meetings. Other key businesses, are a short drive away.
MacNeil said she likes living in Bellows Falls, and the “difficulties,” as she put it, of Brattleboro and Springfield, or Claremont and Keene, N.H., aren’t at play.
There are all ages at The Garage, she said, with seniors, solo people, and young people with small children. MacNeil doesn’t have any pets, but cats and little dogs are allowed in the building, she said.
Tenants seem to come and go in the building. “It always seems to be full,” she said.
MacNeil, 72, had lived in Bellows Falls for about 10 years before she moved into The Garage, as its tenants call it. Before Bellows Falls, she lived in Gilsum, N.H., and worked in Keene, and was the executive director of AIDS Services, “until funding fell apart.” Earlier, she had been the executive director of the Foundation for Biblical Studies in Charlestown, N.H. and served as the marketed director for the Colonial Theater in Keene.
A meeting and friendship with Robert McBride, an artist and Bellows Falls promoter extradinaire, brought her to Bellows Falls in 2014. He even became her landlord, and she lived on Rockingham Street.
When The Garage opened in 2023, she moved in and she’s been there ever since, living in a one-bedroom apartment. It’s perfect, she said, “for people who are feeling more fragile.”
Her only complaint, she said, was that the apartments do not have central airconditioning, and on this hot summer day, she has her own air conditioner going, along with some fans.
Without the air conditioning, she said, it would be 85 degrees and unbearable. MacNeil, who is a freelance writer, handles press releases for several Bellows Falls area organizations, including Bellows Falls Pride.
MacNeil, who was recently appointed and then elected in her own right to the Bellows Falls Village Trustees, said her health problems — including a bad knee — make the accessibility of The Garage and its elevator particularly important. She’s waiting to have knee replacement surgery.
MacNeil and Harty are two different demographic groups on opposite ends of the housing crisis that housing experts look for – young families and people interested in downsizing from a house or large apartment, thus freeing up their home for families.
MacNeil’s apartment is full of art and plants and mementos of a full life.
“We are in this lovely bubble of cooperation,” she said of the larger Bellows Falls community. Back in the 1990s, MacNeil said, “Bellows Falls was no shining star.” Now, she said, Bellows Falls is a desirable location, with a vibrant downtown.
In Putney, Harty’s three-bedroom apartment is called a townhouse, since it is on two levels, with the bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs is a small kitchen that opens up to a large room, that Harty uses as a combination dining room and living room.
Her son is away visiting relatives, and her two teenaged daughters play with the two dogs or disappear upstairs.
Harty is proud of her tidy home, which is home to three teenagers afterall, and she is equally pround of her recent sobriety. Living in such a stable community has helped her tackle her drinking, she said.
But Harty, who spoke before the recent incident at Putney Landing involving a mentally ill man, said that she doesn’t like to tell people she lives at Putney Landing because of what she perceives as unfair prejudice against people who live there.
Putney Landing was in the headlines last month when a new resident, a mentally-ill man from Tennessee, was shot to death by Vermont State Police. It was a traumatic event for the man’s Vermont family as well as the residents of Putney Landing.
The housing complex has been the target of criticism by some Putney residents who say it attracts an “unsavory element” to the town, and the worry is compounded by the collective concern about another WWHT trust project in Putney, currently under construction.
Unlike Putney Landing, the Alice Holway project is very visible, as it’s being built across Route 5 from the Putney Fire Department, and tucked in between the Putney Food Co-op and Putney Meadow elderly housing. Along with all those community resources, it will be one of the first things people will see as they enter Putney from the south.
Elizabeth Bridgewater, the executive director of the Windham Windsor Housing Trust, said Putney Landing drew unwarranted scrutiny and criticism because of the concern over Alice Holway, and the potential loss of green space at the entrance to Putney village.
Since construction started on Alice Holway this spring, that criticism has faded away, Bridgewater said.
After the July 7 shooting, the Putney community responded with a kind gesture for the residents of Putney Landing: flowering plants for each of 18 apartments.
Contact Susan Smallheer at ssmallheer@reformer.com.
