http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuPt_R7vvb8

Lauren is a third-year UVA student, a self-described army brat, an Economics and Environment Science major who plans to go to medical school (after a side trip to culinary arts school, that is).  She’s been an AHIP volunteer since the first week of school of her first year at the university, and she’s come up through the ranks to where she’s now not only a hands-on volunteer, but also a program director for Madison House’s Housing Improvement volunteers.  Thursday is Lauren’s day to coordinate, and also to work the projects her team is assigned by AHIP.  “It’s a nice break,” she says, “Being outside, not cooped up in the library.” She and her team of volunteers love working for AHIP – they love the work, the people, the sense of accomplishment, the clients’ appreciation.  They love Jeni, AHIP’s Volunteer Coordinator;  “She’s great,” Lauren says.  “Once she threw a big ice cream social for us for doing such a good job.”

Service is in her blood, Lauren tells me;  both her parents were in the military, and she was brought up to believe that people should, in addition to their job or their studies, be volunteering.  She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t involved in one volunteer job or another.  “It’s expected,” she says, and it’s clear to me that Lauren is meeting – and exceeding – expectations.

I ask Lauren about the people whose homes she helps fix.  Most of them were born here, she says.  They’ve lived here all their lives, she notes, have built a community of trust, plan to die here.  Different from her own army upbringing; she moved around a lot, has lived in five or six different parts of the country, but feels a kinship to AHIP’s clients.   Home is not so much a structure for me as where my family is, she says; home is where you’re comfortable, the place you love, the place you’re loved.  Sure, she’s coming from a different background and perspective, but she gets it, gets how important their homes are to the people she’s helping. 

We build a lot of ramps, Lauren tells me.  I watch her eyes as she describes a ramp project for a man who’d had a stroke.  “Overnight,” she says, “He went from being completely active and independent to being in a wheelchair.”  She pauses for a long moment, imagining this.  It is clear that Lauren feels both compassion for and a responsibility to this man, feels a responsibility to help the many people over the last couple of years whose homes she’s made accessible to them through AHIP’s emergency repair program.  It is hard for her to think about actually not being able to get inside your own home.  That’s an emergency.

She loves power tools, too, she adds.  She grew up in a house where her dad fixed things, had a circular saw, all kinds of power tools, and she grew up by her dad’s side, helping him, learning from him.  Volunteering for AHIP brings her love of working with tools, of working with her hands and of fixing and building things together with her desire to be a part of the Charlottesville community, to be putting herself and her skills to work making a difference in other people’s lives. “Plus,” she says, “It’s fun.”

By Mandy Hoy, AHIP Supporter

Audrey worked for thirty years or so for the health department, her husband was an electrician in town.  “I should have paid more attention all those years when he was fixing things,” she says, since she’s here by herself now.  Her husband died of cancer just over five years ago, and “I don’t know how to do anything,” she says. This house was newly built when Audrey and her husband bought it, their first house, and the house’s first occupants, and Audrey plans to stay here as long as she can.  She shows me the pictures of herself and her husband, taken in 1958, Audrey in her big circle skirt, her husband with the slicked back hair of the time, sitting on the back of a big old Chevrolet.  She’s kept the house up well inside; it is neat as a pin, the vacuum still out from her last cleaning.   On a shelf that runs the length of the back doors, she keeps a collection of porcelain figurines:  angels and birds, mugs with her grandchildren’s photos on them.  “Dust collectors,” she calls them, but I don’t see a cobweb anywhere.

Though she’s kept up the inside, the outside was giving her some trouble. A while back, she’d called several contractors about the roof;  she had shingles coming off and was worried about the roof leaking. Everyone said she needed a new roof, but she was stuck on the money part.  She was worried all winter about springing a leak, with all the snow and moisture.  She fretted and worried, worried and fretted.  Then one day she saw the advertisement on TV, about AHIP and their program in the city. 

Audrey had known about the county program; her brother, like her husband, was an electrician, and he had done some electrical work for AHIP, but she hadn’t known that there might be some help for her, living in the city.  She called the number on the screen, thought she might as well give it a try, see if they could help her out.  Mr. Miller came out, says Audrey, and agreed that she did need a new roof.  Joyce came to the rescue on the money part, and Jeni brought samples of the shingle colors.  Luckily, the roof didn’t leak through the winter, though Joyce told Audrey if she did see a leak to call and they’d get over there pronto and put a tarp on for her.  Audrey thanked her stars that things held till the summer when the crew, trying to dodge the heat in getting the shingles on – hard to do, in a summer like the one we just had, she says – came in mass, climbed up top and got the new roof done all in one day, since they didn’t have to tear off the other shingles, only one layer up there.  Audrey sighs and takes a sip of her tea.  “I won’t have to worry about leaks this winter,” she says. Through the sliding glass doors she points to the porch rails freshly painted by AHIP; the old white paint must have been the wrong kind, she says.  The posts, painted brown, looked fine, but the white porch rails had bubbled and chipped and peeled.  The way the backyard drops off it was too much for her to handle, this high off the ground.  Now things are ship-shape, inside and out. Audrey sighs again, a big sigh of relief:  “This has been home for a long, long time,” she says.  And thanks to AHIP, it will be for home for a lot longer.

Written by Mandy Hoy, AHIP Supporter

As housing providers and advocates, we are often the most fervent generators of such information. We use every opportunity to get our message across: what we are doing, what we need to be doing, why we need to do more of it.

But no piece of information could ever have taken the place of opening Mrs. Monroe’s front door and walking into her house.

On Tuesday, February 15th, AHIP hosted its first Rehab Tour in the City of Charlottesville. Thirteen people—City officials, City staff, community funders (including the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation), local housing advocates (including Dan Rosensweig, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville), AHIP board and staff—boarded a Jaunt bus and set off to see eight homes: Some awaiting rehabs and repairs to be done by AHIP, and others that had already been rehabbed and repaired.

We only got to three.

The level of need in the first two houses was staggering. The first homeowner, Mrs. Wells, recently widowed and in her 70s, has lived there for 45 years. She survived the severe winter without a working furnace by closing off rooms and using a single kerosene heater to try to stay warm. And all of this in a house with a 100-year-old disintegrating metal roof and no insulation. Standing in an upstairs room, we could see daylight through the ceiling.

One of AHIP’s estimators told me, “When it storms, there is rain and wind inside of her house.”

The second homeowner, Mrs. Monroe, also in her 70s, was gracious and good-humored even as 13 people traipsed through her tiny home. When I asked her how long she has lived in the house, she replied, “All my life.” She has taken care of her children, her nieces and nephews, and her grandchildren there.

The tour-goers were profoundly moved by what they saw. Driving by, they would never have known or been able to imagine the depth of need inside of those walls. How long could any of us do it, living with such conditions? But what choice would we have?

When we got out of the bus on the third stop of the tour, Mrs. Smith was wide-eyed at the number of people walking up the steps to her small Fifeville house. But she was all smiles as she talked about the transformation of her home.

Everyone gathered around her listening to her story was also beaming. It was impossible not to feel overjoyed at the happy ending, standing before this lovely woman whose home was now a source of comfort, safety and security.

Which put the first two stops of the tour into sharp relief. Standing in Mrs. Smith’s charmingly decorated living room, we could imagine the ferocious, gaping holes in Mrs. Monroe’s upstairs ceilings and walls patched up and painted over; we could imagine a new, tight, shingled roof keeping the elements out of Mrs. Wells’ upstairs bedroom. We could imagine returning next year to those houses and seeing joy and pride emanating from two women who once spent winters freezing cold and wondering how long their homes would stay standing.

Why even bother? How much should a community invest in helping our neighbors in need keep their homes safe, decent and healthy? Why should we be concerned with this at all?

Home is the bedrock of our community. When we help people stay safe, protect their assets and achieve housing stability, the benefits to the community are countless. Stable families, preserved assets, safe streets, a legacy of permanence and wealth that will support the next generation who calls Charlottesville home.

A community should invest all it can. The combination of public dollars, private contributions, creative organizational partnerships and lots of volunteer energy and goodwill will go a very long way to ensuring that Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Monroe and other homeowners in need stay safe, warm and dry.

It is well worth the effort, and every one of us is a beneficiary.

- Jen Jacobs, AHIP Executive Director

View a editorial story from CVille Weekly Newspaper inspired by this tour:http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064435450&ShowArticle_ID=12681403113754812