The Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro Habitat for Humanity celebrated a new era on Friday at a meet-and-greet with their incoming executive director. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[people talking, music playing]
Brad Bryant buzzed around the parking lot of the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Staunton on Friday afternoon – chatting with board members, city councillors, and the friendly neighborhood Spiderman. He took the helm of the regional Habitat organization in June, having formerly served as a board member while teaching carpentry at the Valley Career & Technical Center. His charitable building history includes two "Build Blitzes," in which Bryant gathered contractors and students to construct nine small homes in nine days to benefit veterans and former foster kids facing homelessness.
BRAD BRYANT: I still own a Class A contractor business. I still could operate and run that if I wanted to, but I never liked billing people.
Habitat for Humanity builds homes for local residents making between 30% and 80% of the area's adjusted mean income, based on U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Applicants must be currently living in substandard housing, be able to afford a modest monthly mortgage payment, and help build their own house and houses for other families.
BRYANT: We like to say that we give a hand up, not a hand out. … In order for you to grow generational wealth through housing, we need to subsidize this amount of it – but it has caveats with it. We don't just do that without protecting our donors and protecting our backside on that, because, say you are 10 years into your house and you want to sell it. You don't get everything out of that. We get some back of what we put in, too, so that we can take that money and go to our next house and build.
The nonprofit's announcement of their new director notes that David Wenger, the former executive director of Central Valley Habitat for Humanity based in Bridgewater, would stay on the board to support Bryant's transition into leadership.
The Augusta Free Press previously reported that the preceding director resigned in May of 2024, following a board investigation into financial transactions made with organization funds on multiple trips. Wenger stepped in as interim director of the Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro chapter last fall "to help stabilize the organization during a leadership shift," according to Habitat's news release.
Bryant didn't comment on this history directly to WMRA, but did allude to hardships the organization has survived.
BRYANT: This organization is coming back and going to be as strong as ever, and it started with the pieces of the board that stayed here, and an amazing staff. There were two or three staff members that fought hard, stuck around, and really did the things they needed to do to keep this organization in a place where it can move forward. Most organizations, when they face some adversity, it's a financial struggle, it's something like that – they made sure that wasn't something I was walking into.
Charles Edmond, the newly elected board chair who's been involved with the organization for just under a year, said Bryant was their top choice for the job.
CHARLES EDMOND: He's been doing a lot with Habitat from the start. … He knew the vision already. … Being established in the community, there's a lot of people that know him and can vouch for him and the things he's done and the projects he's done.
Among Bryant's network are former students – at least two of whom came to Friday's event.
BRYANT: They are the future builders that will come and work with me here!
His vision for moving the organization forward includes building on properties in Staunton and Waynesboro they already own.
BRYANT: We've never built enough. I mean, we had one year around COVID when there was a lot of flow of money there and everything else. … I think we got to five to six houses there. But while on the board, we had a conversation talking about what capacity we should be building at – with projects that have been on hold and not going forward since then, since '18, like A Street here in Staunton, Kirby and C over in Waynesboro, trying to break into Augusta County a little bit more. That's a difficult spot for us, because of the parameters of the land size and the wells and the septic and some of those things, but we have great ideas of how we're going to work with and through.
To that end, he said they're already in conversations with the local municipal governments and planning commissions.
