Street Spirit June 2004

East Bay Habitat for Humanity's Build-A-Thon

by Lydia Gans (http://www.eastbayhabitat.org/)

Walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons and the like have become popular participatory activities for raising funds and public awareness to deal with important social issues. An interesting variation on that theme is East Bay Habitat for Humanity's annual Build-A-Thon.

Participants with Habitat get a unique reward beyond knowing they have accomplished a feat of physical endurance. They have helped to construct a tangible, lasting edifice - they have participated in building a house! There is a profound satisfaction in that.

Each year, East Bay Habitat for Humanity builds a number of homes for low-income families with the help of volunteers and the "sweat equity" of the future homeowners. It costs a lot of money to acquire the land and to build homes, and the annual Build-A-Thon is Habitat's primary community fundraiser.

On the four-day weekend from July 2 through July 5, around 70 volunteers each day helped to frame six two-story houses on a piece of land on 10th Street in West Oakland. Each person had raised $100 to participate in the project.

Laura Giacomini of Habitat's development staff explained that the volunteers "come here as ambassadors to the community. (They) have gone out and asked friends, families and colleagues for donations for Habitat to support their building effort." She emphasized that it costs over three million dollars to do all these houses.

The volunteers who came out to build were people of all ages and degrees of experience. It was the first time for Karen, a teenager who came with her mother and her friends all the way from Pleasanton. "It's hard work but it's really fun," Karen said, "and it's helping someone."

Marilyn Williams, a longtime volunteer, said, "I believe in the concept and the mission statement, which is decent housing for everyone." She has "learned enough through Habitat to add a room to my Dad's house," she added with pride. "I wanted to do everything from the ground up."

It wasn't all just hard work. There was time out for games - "Habitat Olympics" - with a nailing contest and tool belt relay race. There was good food donated by area businesses, music, and a spirit of friendly competition between the teams working on the different houses.

Building supervisor Dave Sylvester explained that for each house there is a skilled house leader and some skilled crew members, while about 80 percent of the 20 or so people working on each house each day are unskilled. He is pleased with the workers, he said. "Everyone pays a lot of attention to the work they're doing. They're not just slapping it up; they want to do a good job."

By the end of the four-day Build-A-Thon, the first step, framing the six houses, was done. Now the regular Habitat volunteers and the future homeowners will do the rest and complete the many complicated and expensive steps to creating livable homes - the plumbing, wiring, heating, windows, roofing, the floors, finishing the inside and outside walls, and installing appliances.

The stated mission of East Bay Habitat for Humanity is to "create home ownership opportunities by building decent, affordable housing and by enhancing neighborhoods through partnership with homeowners and the community."

Joel Mackey, executive director of East Bay Habitat, is deeply aware of the need for more housing and is focusing his efforts on increasing Habitat's construction capacity. This year he expects to complete 13 or 14 units, but he plans to build up to a level of about 50 homes per year.

Mackey said, "Fifty per year still doesn't address the need, but in terms of long-term vision and a view toward growth, to go from 15 units per year to 50 in five years is a pretty significant increase for our organization." The problem is money. "We continue to struggle with securing sufficient resources to meet the need," he said.

Habitat is a well-known and popular organization and there is no dearth of people to respond to its calls for volunteers to build homes. Sadly, the problem, as always, comes back to the same painful reality: lack of sufficient funds. Is there something wrong with our country's priorities?

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