Introduction to Cofounder Charles Betterton
Charles' HUD career included: six years as Director of Disaster Field Offices in Mississippi, Virginia, Missouri, and Ohio; two years as Special Assistant to the Director of the Housing Management Division in the Detroit Area Office; two years as Chief Property Officer for the Chicago Area Office; and two years as Supervisory Housing Management Specialist in the Chicago Area Office. During his HUD career, he earned numerous Special Achievement Awards and he received the highest cash award ever paid a HUD employee for a modification he suggested for a computerized property management information system that saved an estimated 300 million dollars. Charles has about 8 years of experience with HUD Public Housing programs including serving in management and leadership capacities with HUD, as management staff of the East St. Louis, IL PHA as a consultant to the Muncie, IN PHA and as a consultant and volunteer for the Kankakee, IL PHA Resident Organization. He served as 1 of 2 Supervisory Housing Management Specialists in the Chicago Area Office managing a staff responsible for providing technical assistance, monitoring and evaluation for half of the PHA's. For several months while in that position, he served on a task force as Director of Maintenance Operations for the East St. Louis PHA. Later, after he resigned from HUD, Charles accepted a position as a community organizer for the Kankakee (IL) PHA Resident's Organization. Charles wrote a $250,000 Drug Elimination Grant for the Muncie, Indiana PHA to establish a Success Center Partnership to provide expanded access to development training resources including self-employment training for PHA residents. Through that grant, he served as a consultant to the PHA as a paid project manager for a year and served as a volunteer for about another year. The Success Center Partnership that featured Les Brown was recognized and received awards from HUD and the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO). Latter that year, the Executive Director of the Muncie PHA and Charles gave a presentation on how other PHA's could establish a similar community mobilization and resident empowerment program at the annual NAHRO Convention in Washington, DC. In 1998, Charles was accepted as one of 230 HUD Community Builders out of about 8,500 applicants. Because he would have had to renege on commitments he had made to several community organizations, Ihe declined the position that would have been worth about $250,000 over 2 years.
Charles has lived for
25 years in intentional communities with a focus on Spirit, Service,
Stewardship and Sustainable Living including Stelle,
Illinois (www.stellecommunity.com)
home to the Center for Sustainable Community (www.centerforsustainablecommunity.org)
and he lived at Rainbow Farm, the Emissaries of Divine Light Center
near Muncie, Indiana
Charles is helping manage the non-profit Ultimate Water for Humanity to provide greater access to structured water to some of the one billion residents of SpaceShip Earth who don’t have access to clean water. His other present projects include Solving Our Personal, Community and Global Success Puzzles, a campaign to Expand the Circle of Success as described at www.ultimatesuccesspuzzle.com.
The strategy is to
establish a national and then international network of CAN DO!
Community Resource Centers (www.communityresourcecenters.org).
The Resource Centers will provide access to training on Successful
Living Skills for the 21st Century (www.successfullivingskillsforthe21century.com).
Charles can be reached at charlesbetterton@gmail.com. Additional
sites include:
www.CharlesBetterton.com, More detailed information on Charles' accomplishments including newspaper articles, letters of commendation from President Jimmy Carter, HUD Secretary Moon Landrieu, HUD Regional Administrator Don Morrow, Chambers of Commerce, United Ways, etc. are available at www.charlesbetterton.com. Click Here for his more detailed resume.
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