Habitat For Humanity

JDavis21835

All right, this from a person who volunteers, and has a family member on the board of directors for our local habitat. Our family got involved after the death of an uncle of mine. He was mentally handicapped, basically he had the mind of a 12 year old. He always thought it would be cool to build a habitat house. Our family donated the funds for the house, and a majority of the labor. We also got several equipment donations to do portions of the project. What we really liked about it was the fact that the money we donated will be re used perpetually as the home owners pay off the loan that they get for the house. These houses are not a hand out. The home owners are selected on the basis of need, and ability to pay the low interest loan. Payments are not much different from one would pay in rent every month.

All your experiences vary from local chapter to chapter. I find the bigger chapters are the ones to stay away from, as they are all about the dollar vs the end product. I drive an hour away to get to a different chapter, which is smaller. They are on house 38 vs 100+ homes that the chapter where I live has built. The chapter where I live is currently having problems with having to repo homes that are not being paid for. 7-9 this year alone. Whereas the chapter I volunteer at has only had 1, and that was 4 years ago.

Choose your chapter wisely, and you will have good experiences. The chapter I work with does 3-4 houses a year, so it is a close knit group. We do hire certain aspects of the project done. Most of the time we have an excavation contractor, roofer, a plumber, drywaller and an hvac outfit do those portions. The excavation contractor will dig the basement, backfill, and do the sewer tap. We use ICF for the basements. Dow Chemical donates the foam for them, so we only need to get corners and brackets from the icf supplier. We do our own wall pours, flat work, framing, and electrical. Most of the time the trusses that we set are part of a package from a local supply house that supplies a crane to set them. I generally try to do the finish grades around the houses. We have an arrangement set up with a local rental yard that gives us a good rate on a machine, and I volunteer my day to them. Its all about finding the chapter that works for you. My advice for those in the trade, find a small chapter that understands the value of what we do, and they will appreciate you volunteering for them.

jcalvin

ditto

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Cal


You hired WHO

carolinahandyma

I have volunteered in the past found it to be a good experience. Now I donate reusable materials and home goods to the Habitat Reuse Center. They will even pick-up if you request it. I try to encourage my homeowners to donate reusable items (cabinets, appliance, sinks, etc.) as part of their renovation project. Rather see these items get more use rather than ending up in the landfill!

woodworkbykirk

a few years back i worked on one. the gc i was working for at the time was the president of the homebuilders assoc. and the hba was doing one of 3 houses all in a row. our company trimmed it

bad part the tools, we had 2 big jobs on the go at the time so most of our gear was tied up there which meant using my own gear or the hrh tools which were pretty beat. the other bad part was one day was singles day for the volunteers, one of the organizers wanted us to go over and mingle but when all the women had more body hair and facial hair, we ran into the tent to get lunch and right back into our house


other than that, good experience learned hanging prehungs by hand nailing sucks. after being used to gun nailing. but its for a good cause . Now im just too busy to find time to help on one

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putting down subfloor with glue and screws, well i saw dr. smith and the robot too , i had a martian burger and a sonic shake

BobsLandscaping

They asked me to donate a sod job on one. I offered to seed instead since sod was hard to get ($$$$$) with all the new subdivisions going up in Pullman and east Moscow. They declined, insisted on sod. It was going to cost me over $2K to get the sod, didn't have it to spare.

CharlesD

We donated the siding installation once.
During the job a chauffeur driven Town Car brought a local affluent woman to the job. She got out, put on a Habitat shirt and cloth nail pouch then as a man videoed her she drove one nail--smiling at the camera all the time. She got in her car after doing that and her chauffeur drove her away.
Next day the paper did a write up about Habitat building the house and I will let you guess who got their name and picture in the paper for driving one nail.
Not one mention of the contractors donating time.
I was told this lady and several other wealthy people pulled the same stunt at every house they built.
Of course, I was in the land of the southern aristocrat.
Made me wonder just how much work Jimmy Carter did.

gutterman51

I did some work on a couple of habitat houses, got paid, no real difference for me than any job, except things seemed disorganized. Jimmy must have had something to do with it .