Habitat Launches Nationwide Homebuilding Blitz
Habitat for Humanity (HFH) launched the largest homebuilding event in its 30-year history on Monday, setting the goal of providing houses for more than 1,000 people nationwide in five days.
Habitat for Humanity (HFH) launched the largest homebuilding event in its 30-year history on Monday, setting the goal of providing houses for more than 1,000 people nationwide within five days.
Professional builders and industry professionals are joining forces under the banner of the Home Builders Blitz 2006 to make affordable housing a reality for hundreds of families across the nation. Habitat for Humanity affiliates and 1,000 professional homebuilders this week will build more than 400 Habitat homes in more than 130 communities throughout the United States.
“It is an important event because it is a significant way to help more families in all the communities we work in– which is something we desperately need to do,” said Kevin Campbell, HFH National Director for Home Builders Blitz 2006. “It is taking our relationship to a new level with the professional building industries and not just builders but contractors and manufacturer of products.
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“I’ve been at Habitat for 18 years and that relationship [between Habitat and professional building industries] is not as deep as it could be. I think this event will propel our relationship which will have some far reaching benefits in the future.”
Home Builders Blitz 2006 is the largest event in the history of Habitat for Humanity in terms of houses built and number of locations.
“Personally for me, this is the culmination of more than two years of planning, recruiting and marketing and it is the biggest project I’ve ever overseen,” said Campbell. “It is great to be able to go out and see the projects. For me working from the headquarters, it is an opportunity to meet the families that will be purchasing the homes – an experience which I don’t often see from headquarters. I will be in a different city each day of this week.”
Habitat hopes to make the nationwide Home Builders Blitz 2006 a one-time event that can serve as a model for its local affiliates who can in turn continue the efforts annually on their own initiative and time frame on a local scale.
Affiliates taking part in the Home Building Blitz include HFH in Oakland, Houston, Denver, Orlando, and Richmond and many others among the more than 2,100 active Habitat affiliates.
The proposed schedule for each local project during the five-day building is:
• On Monday, builders will complete the framing of the house and roof;
• On Tuesday, contractors such as plumbers, electricians, and heating contractors will install their products and are scheduled to finish by noon, at which time the house is inspected. Following the inspection on Tuesday afternoon, the builders will start putting up dry walls, shingles on the roof, and vinyl sidings;
• On Wednesday, builders will put in cabinets, doors, and paint the walls;
• On Thursday the flooring will be installed; and
• On Friday the landscaping will be completed.
“Professional builders are not used to building a whole home in five days but it is not impossible to do,” said Campbell as he drove to Charlotte, N.C. “It is all about coordination; it is not a super human feat that somebody figured out a new way to build a house. It is just compressing the time into five days and having the inspectors cooperative.”
Campbell concluded by noting that many of the Habitat homeowners are Christians who view the home built for them as an answer to their prayers.
“If you are around the homeowners, you will hear testimonies of faith. Many times they are very faithful and faithfully praying for years for a home. They view Habitat accepting their application and building their house as an answer to their prayer.”
Habitat for Humanity International has built more than 200,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1,000,000 people in more than 3,000 communities with “safe, decent, affordable shelter.”
“I think a lot of people are looking for a practical application of faith and it really doesn’t get any better than Habitat – it is so practical, so visible, you can spend a couple of hours and see the difference that you actually made,” said Campbell.
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