The community center at Woodside Village is a comfortable place with a decorated tree in one corner and a wall of drawings. “You are my BFF,” reads one.

The drawings are created by children in the afterschool programs at the YMCA who visit Woodside once a week as part of the Island Elderly Housing Bridging program, the brainchild of Blueberry Van driver Kevin McFarland.

“It’s a long walk,” said kindergartner Kamari Clements of the journey from the Y to the community center next door.

The Vineyard Health Care Access Program and Island Elderly Housing, Inc. have been named recipients of Cape and Islands United Way community investment grants. A total of $600,000 has been allocated to 35 local programs on the Cape and Islands that serve the needs of children, families and aging and vulnerable populations. The Vineyard Health Care Access Program provides medication assistance to Island residents. Island Elderly housing sponsors a community dinner program.

In a surprise vote late last night, the Martha's Vineyard Commission narrowly failed to approve plans by Island Elderly Housing for a five-unit apartment building for low-income elderly on their Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road property in Tisbury.

Commissioners stopped short of a vote to deny Hillside Village III, deferring the decision for further discussion at the MVC's next meeting Thursday.

A quarter century ago, an elderly woman lived in an unwinterized house on Lambert's Cove Road with no running water and no car. Every day, she walked into town for water. In the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs, many seniors confined themselves to one room in the winter because their uninsulated homes were too expensive to heat. Countless more Island elders were doing the Vineyard shuffle along with the young people, moving twice a year between summer and winter rentals.

For 30 years it has been the Island’s best-kept secret.

And today Island Elderly Housing (IEH) also remains one of the Island’s best success stories, thanks in part to the original founders, Margaret Love, Marguerite Bergstrom and Carol Lashnits, who had a strong and far-sighted vision of what was needed for not only the elder citizens of the Vineyard, but for its disabled population as well.