Catch the HomeAid Vision

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Organization celebrates new Las Vegas chapter as building team delivers raffle house.

People in dire circumstances often need a safety net to catch and relaunch them. But in many places, the safety net is tattered or nonexistent.

 

Also See:

HomeAid Intro Georgia-Pacific Beazer Homes Kimball Hill Homes HomeAid Chapters HomeAid Partners 10 Reasons Show Village Home

HomeAid America, based in Costa Mesa, Calif., is working to reweave that safety net state by state, city by city, project by project and human by human. HomeAid builds and renovates shelters for temporarily homeless men, women and children across America. The goal is to return families and individuals to productive, self-sufficient lives. Among the group's beneficiaries are homeless families, victims of domestic violence, pregnant teenagers and emancipated youth emerging from foster-care systems.

HomeAid is working with Georgia-Pacific Corp. and the Nevada divisions of Atlanta-based Beazer Homes USA and Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based Kimball Hill Homes to construct a home at Show Village 2004 in Las Vegas. After the International Builders' Show, the home will be moved to a Henderson, Nev., site that Beazer highly discounted. The home then will be raffled, and the proceeds will help provide startup funds for HomeAid's 23rd chapter, a Las Vegas affiliate whose opening will be celebrated at Show Village.

 

"WINGS (Women in Need Growing Stronger)" for victims of domestic violence; Built by HomeAid Chicago and Kimball Hill Homes (under construction)

"Banyon House" for homeless families built by HomeAid Northern California and Standard Pacific Homes.

Beyond building a house, HomeAid also aims to build new relationships during Show Village and, as HomeAid president and CEO Michael J. Lennon puts it, "help other people catch the HomeAid vision of reclaiming lives and helping those less fortunate to regain lives of self-sufficiency." He sees Show Village as an opportunity to tell the HomeAid story and recruit new partners who will help expand the program throughout the country. "If you can show people how they can be involved, they'll happily give of their time, talent and financial resources."

Calling All Visionaries

The HomeAid model is both simple and brilliant. Chapters are established under the auspices of a local building association, usually an NAHB affiliate. A local chapter picks a community-care provider that needs a new or renovated shelter, and then a local builder, known as a builder captain, oversees construction of the project. The builder captain and the HomeAid chapter enlist trade partners to donate the necessary labor, materials and consulting services. The assembled team then completes a new or renovated facility and turns it over to the community-care provider.

The buildings are top-quality structures with institutional durability and a residential aesthetic. The goal is for residents to walk in and feel uplifted, valued and hopeful. Lennon emphasizes the importance of developing partnerships to solve social challenges and has observed that charitable endeavors often mean more to people when they're invited to contribute their talents rather than just money. "I never ask for charitable contributions," he says. "I ask for partnership investments. The return on people's investment is lives reclaimed."

 

Focus on fulfillment

The HomeAid experience often creates ongoing links between a volunteer or company and a community-care provider. Many volunteers promote the organizations with which they worked. Some also keep in touch with people they met, continue giving monetary and in-kind gifts, and remember residents of HomeAid facilities on birthdays and holidays. "Countless times people in the industry thank me for allowing them to be involved in HomeAid," Lennon says. "They don't care about the recognition they receive, but rather focus on the fulfillment they get from knowing they're using their craft and expertise to redeem someone else's life."

The talents of the building industry generate the juice that fuels HomeAid. "Without the building industry, there would be no HomeAid program," Lennon says. "The building industry is huge and full of visionaries who are smart, can-do entrepreneurs -- bighearted people with service-oriented corporate cultures. They're people who build dreams for families and communities. With HomeAid, we've packaged something tailor-made for the building industry."

Lennon recalls taking a builder and an architect to a home for young unwed mothers. They met the program director and some of the girls. The proposed project involved expanding the facility from six to 12 beds. Instead, the builder scanned the property and suggested building a new house on an adjacent site, tearing down the existing house and building a new one. The team delivered a 2,800-square-foot house and a 5,000-square-foot facility to accommodate more moms and allow them to reside there an extra year with their newborns.

For another project, Lennon arrived for an 8 a.m. dedication ceremony and met two interior designers. When he asked the volunteers what time they had arrived, they said they'd been working on the house all night. "It had to be right," they told him.