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Several times each year, Community Home Trust offers a free home maintenance class for our homeowners and other interested community members. The class is taught by Chris and Mindy Meyers, founders of Home Repair Lab, and our own Property Manager, Ian Morse. The goal of the class is to help attendees understand how their homes operate, give them knowledge to interact with service providers, and help them learn to be their own advocates for repairs and maintenance. A portion of the class is also dedicated to reviewing our Stewardship Program and answering CHT homeowners’ questions.

During their presentation at this week’s class, Chris and Mindy went over the fundamental systems that make up a home: structural (foundation to roof), plumbing, and electrical. They provided hands-on examples of the components of those systems and talked about how those systems may vary in different types of homes. Their focus was on ensuring that attendees had the basic vocabulary and knowledge to interact with service providers when systems fail and knew what questions to ask when interviewing contractors and reviewing estimates for repairs. Throughout the presentation, attendees were invited to ask questions specific to their homes to ensure they had the information they needed to keep them in good shape.

Chris and Mindy’s portion of the session is the first in their nine-class series focused on becoming “maintenance ready.” If you’d like to learn more about the other classes they offer, you can visit their website. Two attendees at this week’s CHT session also won a drawing to attend the next class in the series, “Maintenance Fundamentals”!

The last half hour of the session was led by Ian Morse, CHT’s Property Manager, and focused on our Stewardship Program. This program is designed to support CHT homeowners with the costs of repairing or replacing essential home systems such as roofing, HVAC units, and water heaters. Ian explains the program to homeowners when they purchase their homes, so this portion of the session was intended to be a review of that material and a chance for homeowners to ask questions specific to their homes or the experiences they’ve had since moving in. The presentation served as a reminder of how the program works, how to access the funds, and what systems it does and does not cover. Our complete stewardship guidelines and application are available on our website.

Whether you’re a CHT homeowner or not, if you’re interested in joining us for an upcoming free home maintenance class, please register today! Learn more and sign up here. You can also contact Ian Morse with any questions.