2024: End of year reflection

FROM TY BROWN, AFS OPS DIRECTOR

2024…where to start? The year was challenging, and with those challenges came great rewards.Our co-op proudly completed renovations on six properties, providing members of the West Baltimore community with access to safe, affordable housing. Through hard work and collaboration, we’ve taken meaningful steps to support our neighbors and strengthen our community. Our co-op was blessed with the opportunity to buy 13 properties in 2024 growing our real estate portfolio to 24 properties. We are on track to double that number in finished properties in 2025 providing the community with even more opportunities for affordable housing.

In 2024 we partnered with Requity, a non profit foundation whose vision aligns with ours and happens to be right here in the same neighborhood we have been working in to build houses and teach valuable skills to local residents, students and now our workers. Waterbottle was not only able to send some of its members to the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives co-op conference in Chicago in September but this led to us becoming members of the USFWC!  

In 2024 AFS was able to grow its staff while giving its employees competitive wages and opportunities to work in skilled trades. Through hands-on experience, our employees gain valuable life skills that set them on a path toward long-term professional success. 2025 brings the promise of WaterBottle growing even bigger and being able to do more for the West Baltimore community. We will keep working hard to bring community equity to distressed neighborhoods and possibly grow to other communities we can uplift as well.