A little over seven years ago, Keith Trott saw an ad for a part-time position at Housing Assistance overseeing maintenance at our Carriage House and Village at Cataumet family shelters.
It came at the perfect time for Trott who had been retired after spending over 20 years in construction as a builder for high-end homes on Cape Cod and the Islands as well as other parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
As the affable Trott tells it, his wife Diane, a real estate appraiser, had been nudging him to find a job so he applied for the one at Housing Assistance.
Six months later, that 15-hour a week job turned into a 25-hour per week position as Keith was asked to assist with additional maintenance needs in Hyannis at our office on West Main Street as well as our Angel House and Scattered Sites shelters.
It wasn’t long before Trott was eventually hired full-time, overseeing Housing Assistance’s maintenance needs for all of its properties. Over the past year and a half, Trott has served as the agency’s Director of Housing Production and Maintenance, recently managing the Lofts at 57 project which brought eight new townhouse-style apartments to Ridgewood Avenue near downtown Hyannis.
In his current role, Keith is identifying ways the agency can replicate the Lofts at 57 – a small, but dense mixed-income pocket neighborhood built modularly – in other communities throughout Cape Cod.
“Right now, we’re contacting different towns on the Cape to see what properties they might have available for more workforce housing,” he said.
Trott also is responsible for supporting staff by ensuring the facilities we own meet their needs so they can best serve our clients. Housing Assistance has over 20 properties and over 200 units that Trott’s department helps to maintain.
“We’ve come up with a good in-house maintenance staff that has saved our organization an extensive amount of money taking care of work in-house instead of hiring it out,” Trott said.
What started as a job to get out of the house for a few hours a week has become a labor of love for Trott who quickly became enamored with the mission of Housing Assistance and those responsible for carrying it through.
“As I got to meet more and more of the staff and the people working in the agency, the more impressed and amazed I was at the talents of the people they had,” he said. “They were so devoted to what they do and working with our clients. The staff really are the unsung heroes. They are just awesome and probably one of the biggest factors of me staying here.”
