Give
June 27, 2023
Dear friends of Bob Haas,
As most of you know, after a lengthy battle on several health fronts our friend Bob passed six months ago in December. Bob’s home at 29 Monadnock Street is a huge part of his legacy and Bob’s expressed hope was that his house (affectionately “29”) would continue to foster leadership development and community among people committed to the health of Boston’s neighborhoods. He intended that 29 would remain a supportive and affordable residence and meeting place for people motivated to live in and serve communities like Upham’s Corner. To that end, he asked us to establish a non-profit organization to assume ownership and management of 29, his beloved Victorian home, in partnership with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) and Dudley Neighbors Inc.’s community land trust.
We, the Bob Haas Community Trust, Inc. (https://www.haashouse.org), are writing today to invite you to partner with us as we honor and build upon Bob’s unique legacy. Serving as a kind of “base camp” in the community, Bob’s house is where many of us deepened our faith, grew as leaders, and connected with the neighborhood’s cultural diversity. As a high school teacher in training, I lived at 29 in the mid-1980s along with housemates who were carpenters, health care workers, seminarians, and counselors in training. Life with Bob and our Monadnock Street neighbors became a remarkable hands-on, interdisciplinary tutorial in community development, cross-cultural awareness, and compassionate activism. My story is just one in more than 50 years of Bob’s community building efforts at 29 Monadnock Street, a legacy recently featured in the Boston Globe .
The Ask: Our initial challenge is to clear a sizeable reverse mortgage Bob accrued due to increased health care needs in the last year of his life. Once this debt is paid, the Bob Haas Community Trust can begin our role as managers and stewards at 29. We are holding promising conversations with a variety of community organizations and institutional funding sources to raise the needed funds, but we need personal donations as well. We hope to raise a total of $40,000 from people like us. As past housemates and friends will you help us protect Bob’s legacy at 29 Monadnock?
To donate please:
1. Give online at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bobhaas, or
2. Make checks payable to the “Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative” and include “Bob
Haas” on the memo, and mail checks to:
DSNI
550 Dudley Street
Roxbury, MA 021192
c/o Mike Pollio
Given the mounting needs of our city, the soaring cost of urban housing, and the troubling lack of cross-cultural respect in our nation’s civic life, preserving 29’s affordable, supportive and neighborly way is that much more urgent today.
Imagine with us Bob’s smiling face as we each respond as generously as we can!
Gladly,
Scott Walker
on behalf of the rest of the Bob Haas Community Trust board: Maggie Austen, John Barros, Steve Gatter, Andrew Harmon, Keiko Hiromi, Patricia Maguire, Alice Nelson, and Rob Wall.
