Habitat for Humanity

The sky above my apartment building split into a celestial civil war as I walked across the parking lot just before 7 a.m. To the east the sun’s first light had dyed the sky in Easter egg colors. To the west a swollen moon hung on a bright purple-blue backdrop. I dropped onto my car seat and let the engine’s first grunts break the silence. Then I hit the road and headed east towards Immokalee.

An hour later I pulled into Liberty Landing, the current Habitat for Humanity construction site in Immokalee. By now, the sun had made its decisive push into the sky and a thick layer of fog was evaporating into the bright day. A row of buildings in various stages of construction stretched down the right side of the road like paper dolls. Parallel to them, a line of pick up trucks glinted in the morning light.

Although I am neither a handy person nor a morning person, Habitat for Humanity has always appealed to me. I like the idea of leaving the office, tearing myself away from the computer and using my hands to create something real, heavy and three-dimensional. I like the idea of building somebody’s home.

Photo by SARAH FELDBERG

A man cleans materials outside the frame that will become the 462th house built in Immokalee by Habitat for Humanity of Collier County.

Founded in 1976 by Linda and Millard Fuller, Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) is a non-profit organization focused housing the world’s poor. The organization operates in 90 countries and estimates that it has built or rehabilitated more than 150,000 homes worldwide. The Collier County affiliate, which first broke ground in 1978, is the second oldest in the HFHI family. To date the organization has constructed 1,000 houses for local families.

Work was already well under way at Liberty Landing when I walked onto the construction site at 8:15 a.m. I introduced myself to the first employee that I saw, a woman named Gloria, who flushed me into her team quickly and without ceremony.

“You want to sweep?” she asked. A few minutes later I was pushing dust, dirt and bits of plaster around the concrete floor of a small bedroom in house #461.

The houses at Liberty Landing are simple, squat three bedroom/1 bathroom buildings with an attached garage. They are small but sturdy, and cost approximately $60,000 to construct. The site works like a stationary assembly line, with the workers, rather than the products, moving down the line. The houses are framed all at once, then progressively completed – walls, then floors, then siding and roofing. The whole process takes about two and a half months.

The team working on our house was made up of two HFHI employees, three volunteers (including myself) and future home recipient Maria Tomas.

While in season an average week can see 150-200 volunteers pour into the construction site, during the summer and early fall only a sparse group shows up in Immokalee every morning. On the day I came to work, only about seven total volunteers were helping with the houses.

Photo by SARAH FELDBERG

Future Habitat for Humanity home recipient Maria Tomas lays linoleum tiles at the construction site in Immokalee. Each family is required to contribute 500 "sweat equity hours" to the building site.

But volunteers aren’t the only people who spend mornings sawing, plastering and painting the small homes. Unlike many charitable organizations, HFHI forms partnerships with families in need and works alongside them to build the houses that they will eventually move into. After making it through a need-based selection process, families must put down a small deposit on their house, and then contribute a total of 500 “sweat equity hours.” Basically, they have to help with the construction in order to earn their home.

“It’s a hand up not a hand out,” explained Director of Construction in Immokalee, Greg Kouloheras.

Kouloheras, 31, also said that a quick drive through the city proves the importance of HFHI’s work for underprivileged people.

“When they’re living here they’re living in third world conditions,” he said. “I’ve really tried to bring a sense of urgency to it.”

The mood was a bit lighter on site as we tackled our job laying the flooring in house 461. After sweeping out the entire house, we dragged deep buckets of glue into the back bedrooms and began to paint the floor with long roller strokes of the sticky, cream-colored paste.

“You want to clean your hands?” asked Ifresia, a HFHI staffer when we’d finished smearing the glue all over the cold cement floor. My hands had reached that stage of stickiness where the skin stretches slightly, trying to hold on to whatever it touches – the roller, my shorts, my other hand. In kindergarten I would have relished in slowly peeling the glue off of my palms, but this time I held out my hands and let Ifresia spray them with WD40.

Despite being slightly wary of the intoxicating oil and chemical aroma now wafting from my skin, I rubbed my hands together and watched as the thick glue wiped cleanly away. I couldn’t help thinking of the goofy father and his bottle of Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Next up were the tiles – large flexible squares of linoleum printed with a pattern that evoked elementary school classrooms or doctors’ offices. We pressed them into the partially dried glue, one by one, again and again and again.

Just as my knees began a painful protest, I realized the room was done. I stood up and surveyed my work.

Despite the plain walls and total lack of doors or base boards, with the floor in place, building 461 was starting to look less like a construction site and more like someone’s brand new home. When I dropped back into the front seat of my car a little after noon, I felt that I’d really accomplished something, that I’d helped Maria get one step closer to owning a home.

Want to volunteer? Join the crew Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. Check out www.habitatcollier.org for more info.

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