How it Works

DASH for LaGrange, Inc. is a comprehensive community revitalization organization. Our mission is to revitalize and make sustainable LaGrange's once vibrant neighborhoods. To do this, we work to:

• Eliminate substandard housing
• Create socio-economic diversity
• Encourage homeownership
• Invite economic development
• Engage residents in active community leadership

Community building and organizing is recognized by DASH as an integral component to successful community revitalization. DASH continuously works to foster community involvement and residential leadership within its neighborhoods. We are proud of our successes to date which have fostered a sense of community among residents and unveiled talented volunteers and potential community leaders. Our community building accomplishments include creation of an active Neighborhood Watch program, monthly curb market and resident leadership training at Hillside.

DASH continuously works to involve residents in the development of plans for the redevelopment of their neighborhood. DASH recognizes that it can build houses and make physical enhancements to a neighborhood but that only families can build homes -- and only neighbors can build communities. True neighborhood revitalization depends on active community involvement and leadership.

To empower neighborhood residents, DASH provides them ample opportunity to voice their concerns and desires for the revitalization projects in their community. As existing DASH neighborhoods become more and more self-sustaining, DASH is enabled to focus more attention on other LaGrange neighborhoods in need.

If you would like to volunteer your time and talents to any of these projects -- or if you have ideas for other neighborhood activities you'd like to lead -- contact DASH Assistant Director Cathy Smith at (706) 298-0221, ext. 125, or .

Revitalizing Houses

Recognizing the home as the backbone of a community, DASH for LaGrange commits to high standards when rehabilitating houses. A full-fledged overhaul may call for stripping houses down to studs if necessary to rebuild a quality home. Specifications for DASH houses include:

• New roofing, siding, interior walls, fireplaces and chimneys
• Remove all termite and water damage and repair or replace foundations
• 30-year architectural shingles on roofs
• Ridge vents, gable vents or other appropriate materials for sufficient attic ventilation
• New windows with vinyl, insulated glass units
• New insulated steel exterior doors with adjustable thresholds
• Replace exterior siding with HardiePlank™ siding, which is termite-resistant, water-resistant and non-combustible
• Electrical system with new wiring, panels and devices
• New central heating and cooling system
• New plumbing and fixtures including new water and sewer lines
• EnergyStar®-approved insulation and appliances
• New deck or patio at most homes
• Concrete driveway with two-car parking
• Attractive landscaping

In revitalizing LaGrange neighborhoods, DASH strives for environmental sustainability. The goal is to eliminate blight while utilizing existing sewer and water infrastructure and maximizing existing amenities such as sidewalks and mature trees.

DASH Board of Directors

Activities of DASH are overseen by a Board of Directors consisting of LaGrange residents who represent a variety of roles in the community, ranging from elected government officials to civic-minded volunteers. One-third of the directors reside in or represent low-to-moderate income neighborhoods.

The number of directors on the Board is set between eight and 19. Currently, the Board consists of 17 directors, each nominated by fellow board members and elected to three-year terms. Current board members are:

• Ricky Wolfe, chairman -
  Debbie Burdette, secretary -
• Patrick Crews, vice chairman/treasurer -
  Joe Alford -
  Tara Allen -
  Dr. Linda Buchanan -
  Larry Cole
  Frank Cox
  Doug DeCelle -
  Tom Hall -
  Eurie Kelley
  Walt Knight
  Charles Milligan -
  Yvonne Pittman –
  Leon Pitts -
  Kathy Tilley -
  Renee Wolfe –

Members of the Board of Directors are community volunteers and are not paid for their service as directors. The Board meets monthly. In addition, directors are expected to serve on committees within the organization, with each committee assigned a staff support person knowledgeable in the targeted area. Standing committees include Administrative and Audit. Ad hoc committees are appointed as the Board deems necessary to meet the mission and operational plans.

Positively impacting lives

If success is to be defined in human terms, DASH can lift up several families as examples of how their neighborhood revitalization efforts have impacted lives for the better.

Dana Squillante: "I needed a neighborhood."
Dana Squillante was 11 when her family moved to the Hillside neighborhood in 1969. Her memories of growing up there evoke images of Norman Rockwell paintings.

“The Callaway Educational building was right around the corner and we’d cut across the backyards to get there,” she recalls. “We lived at the pool all summer, and on the way home we’d stop by the drugstore at Hillside for lemon sours. It was wonderful.”

Eventually Squillante had children of her own and moved to the outskirts of town. Two decades later, she longed for the sense of community she’d grown up knowing.

“About that time I saw a DASH commercial on TV,” she recalls. “Ricky Wolfe was walking by that first house and I thought, ‘Oh, Wow, this is a nice place with tree-lined streets and sidewalks.’ It was a real neighborhood, and I needed a neighborhood.”

In 2004, she became one of the first five homeowners.

“This was the best thing for me and my family,” she says, curled up in a rocking chair in her living room four years later. “Everything I need is just a hop, skip and a jump away. And I like the diversity here—black, white, high income, low income.”

Hillside had changed since her youth, Squillante admits. But she knew DASH was determined to restore it to a tight-knit community with safe streets.

“The City of LaGrange took this project on just like DASH did and now we have a police presence that makes this area one of the safest in town,” she says, adding that she no longer drives to the local track to walk; her new neighborhood—her old neighborhood restored—has become her track.

“I walk these sidewalks a lot, waving to my neighbors as I go,” she says. “It’s such a great neighborhood. It’s home. I’m back where I need to be.”

For Dana Squillante and her neighbors, DASH for LaGrange put heart back in Hillside.

DASH for LaGrange (Dependable, Affordable, Sustainable Housing) formed in 2002 to address growing concerns of inadequate housing in this west Georgia town near the Chattahoochee River. Founding of the nonprofit corporation came on the heels of a joint report by the City of LaGrange, the Callaway Foundation and LaGrange College that named affordable housing a priority issue in this city of 25,000 residents, where out of 11,000 units of housing, almost 3,000 were found lacking in terms of construction and safety.

DASH began purchasing properties in 2003, paying as little as $18,000 for some. With the City of LaGrange granting redevelopment authority to the nonprofit and working alongside it to improve infrastructure, DASH started rebuilding aging houses and selling them, often to first-time homeowners.

To date, DASH for LaGrange has attracted and reinvested $25 million in capital. DASH channels all proceeds from home sales into a revolving fund to continue the cycle of rehabilitating and building more homes.

Along with building structures, DASH builds up people by providing homeownership opportunities via the DASH Homeownership Center, which works closely with buyers before, during and after home sales. More than 1,000 clients have been served through the Center with more than 62,000 hours of credit counseling and education.

It's All About Vision

When Ricky Wolfe moved back to his native LaGrange after living elsewhere for three decades, what he recognized upon his return startled him at first -- poverty housing in the idyllic hometown of his youth. This revelation grew into a resolve to eliminate what he deemed responsible for stealing the "sense of community" from local communities, "ordinary neighborliness" from once-extraordinary neighborhoods.

The culprit he held responsible, and sought to overcome: substandard housing.

Wolfe and his wife, Lynn, grew up in LaGrange; he, in a mill village where children were called "lint-heads" by kids raised in more affluent neighborhoods, such as the Beechwood Circle area where his wife grew up. The couple moved from LaGrange in the early 1970s and, over the next 30 years, raised a family while Wolfe worked as an engineer in textiles and electronics. In the 1990s, Wolfe and two partners bought Clark Schwebel Corporation, a designer and manufacturer of printed circuit boards; the company employed 4,000 with operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In 1998, the partners sold their company, and the Wolfes moved back to LaGrange the following year.

With a new millennium on the horizon, and early retirement at the age of 48, Wolfe returned to LaGrange, he says, with "basically nothing to do." He committed to volunteering and, in early 2000, was asked to serve on the board of the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate, a move that opened his eyes to poverty housing. Riding through the mill villages of his youth, Wolfe saw dilapidated houses where freshly painted homes once glowed, sagging front porches where families once gathered at twilight, dismal signs of decay and disdain where happiness and sense of home were once prevalent.

The self-described lint-head had grown up in the Dunson Mill Village where both of his parents worked at the mill. Money was tight but times were sweet.

"My memories of the mill villages were filled with images of pretty streets, big trees, security for the children, neighbors being good neighbors, healthy churches, community centers and beautiful yards," Wolfe recalls. "When I came back and drove through these same villages, I was deeply saddened by what I saw - local churches struggling, no community center, homeownership rates that had dropped dramatically and no love evident for neighbor or community."

Problems in the old neighborhoods were only getting worse, primarily due to an aging population that could not afford to invest capital back into their communities.

"There were elderly people, most on fixed incomes, living in big, non-insulated homes that they could no longer maintain," Wolfe recalls. "No capital was going back into the neighborhoods. I saw a trend that, if left unchecked, twenty years from now would see all these mill villages laid to waste and a blight on this city with the elderly impacted in a very negative way in terms of property value and, more importantly, in terms of their quality of life and health."

Taking Action
Moved by what he saw, Wolfe called on friends and family members to assist him in assessing the substandard housing situation in LaGrange. Their findings revealed that as a city of 26,000 in population, LaGrange had approximately 11,000 units of housing; of those, roughly 3,000 were deemed substandard.

The information propelled Wolfe to take further action. The City of LaGrange, the Callaway Foundation, Inc., and LaGrange College had recently studied the projected growth of LaGrange and how local communities could take advantage of, but also control, that inevitable growth. "Their report raised the lack of affordable housing to the forefront as an obstacle here that had to be overcome," says Wolfe.

While several local housing support agencies were making efforts, Wolfe found that none were collaborating with each other. His goal was to bring the best of these efforts together, to work in a unified way to reach the common goal of improving neighborhoods by upgrading the houses in them.

For the bulk of 2002, Wolfe and a loosely organized group of friends served as a task force to gather data, research methods to address housing needs and establish a base of community support. In September 2002, they presented a business plan to the Callaway Foundation, which honored their request for $5 million to begin neighborhood revitalization efforts in the Hillside community. In late 2002, Wolfe and several members of the original task force met for the first time as DASH - Dependable, Affordable, Sustainable Housing - for LaGrange to chart the course for the Hillside project. The vision was now becoming reality.

Vision To improve the quality of life in LaGrange by improving the communities in which we live

Mission To revitalize and make sustainable LaGrange's once vibrant neighborhoods