Habitat for Humanity helps repair Piano Hospital lodging

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School of Piano Technology for the Blind:

www.pianotuningschool.org

Evergreen Habitat for Humanity’s A Brush With Kindness Programs:

www.ehfh.org/a-brush-with-kindness

3 Grands: Fourth Annual Concert for the Blind

What: Concert to benefit the School of Piano Technology for the Blind and the Washington State School for the Blind, featuring blind pianists Mac Potts, Brent Gjerve, Nick Baker; singer Darcy Schmitt; and singer-saxophonist Patrick Lamb.

When: Doors open at 5 p.m., music at 6 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Bethany Vineyard, 4115 N.E. 259th St., Ridgefield.

Cost: $30 in advance and $35 after Friday. Tickets available at www.pianotuningschool.org/3-grands-concert-for-the-blind or by calling 360-693-1511.

Most students who come to the Piano Hospital in Vancouver to build careers in piano technology and tuning are low income and blind, executive director Cheri Martin said.

They’re thrilled to find a school such as this one, and the school is thrilled to have them, Martin said. But finding affordable housing for them — in a town where the apartment vacancy rate is low and rents are rising fast — can be a huge problem.

That’s why Martin, who started as executive director there just a few months ago, is glad to count among the school’s assets a little three-bedroom house that sits on neighboring land on East Evergreen Boulevard. It’s right between the Piano Hospital — the proper name is the School of Piano Technology for the Blind — and the bowling alley next door.

The school has rented the house at bargain-basement rates to its students since it purchased the house in 2001 with money donated by a Seattle benefactor, Joyce Evans. Before that it was the property of Helen Walling, who lived in the house for approximately 60 years, until 1999, and provided room and board for many Piano Hospital students.

Martin knows precious little about Evans and Walling, she said — but she figures that both women ought to be smiling right about now.

That’s because Martin frankly was dismayed to find the shape that so-called Joyce Evans Hall has fallen into.

“Blind students and their service dogs — that’s hard on a little old house,” she said.

She started calling around to any agency that might be able to help, she said — and was surprised to find an eager partner in Evergreen Habitat for Humanity.

Besides building new homes for people in need, Habitat has a sideline called A Brush With Kindness, aimed at keeping low-income people in their own homes by performing exterior repairs that keep things copacetic and up to code — such as repairing and painting siding, fixing or replacing windows and doors, replacing porches and porch stairs, removing junk and doing yard work.

Normally, Habitat wants to work out the kind of deal it’s known for — a zero-interest loan with kind terms of repayment — but this project was taken on in-kind, according to Habitat AmeriCorps worker Koko Olszewski. Volunteers with Habitat and with the Fort Vancouver Lions Club recently worked to finish up with siding replacement and repairs, pressure washing, painting and a thorough cleanup of the grounds.

Still, Martin added, the idea of a brand new house remains intriguing — not to replace Joyce Evans Hall but to go alongside it. The house sits on a long double-lot, she pointed out, and there’s enough room for a second residence — a duplex — fronting East Eighth Street to the north.

But that’s more of a vision than anything real right now, she said. The School of Piano Technology is focused on getting its little dormitory ready for the fall semester, inside and out. Among other things, Martin said, that means making it accessible and safe for the visually impaired in a way that it’s never been, she said.

Dangerous, aging baseboard heating is coming out and a new, state-of-the-art overhead heater already has been installed. One board member found a used refrigerator. An open hole in the back foundation will be filled. Plumbing repairs are underway too.

“To be able to recruit students and to be able to offer them affordable housing — that is great,” Martin said.

New paint on the exterior will be blue.