This week a small percentage of Calhoun County’s poorly housed people will open doors to a better life. About one in seven local people will help. Thousands more will take notice in newspapers, on the television news, on the radio. The stories of hard luck redeemed will make people feel nice. No longer will Jonell Gorman carry her 35-year-old son across the threshold of her home, his wheelchair wider than the door.
No longer will LaKeitha Jones listen to her 2-year-old coughing through the night, her asthmatic lungs parched by out-of-date floor heaters.
No longer will Lela Chatman shut herself inside all day, afraid.
Witnessing Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy Carter Work Project will be a bit like watching a video of a tornado ripping through a neighborhood, but in reverse. By Friday, 36 new homes will come together in a flurry.
Starting Monday morning, a song of humming power saws and thumping hammers will play across a hill in Wellborn Heights. More than 2,800 people will participate, about 1,200 having traveled here from across state lines and oceans to help.
In five days it will be a completed communal feat that will be recalled in future years in family photo albums and “A Look Back” news programs.
People will recall the adrenaline that allowed people with no carpentry experience to pound nails for hours on end. They will remember how a worthy cause made minor aches and frustrations seem trivial. They will talk about the families they helped, and how those families had a lot to give, too.
The significance of the event will be measured two ways. In the short term, Friday’s outcome is inevitable. Three dozen dreams will have taken form in reality. Jimmy Carter will hand out front-door keys, and people will cry and hug and lift their hands in the air.
But what will come in the long haul, Habitat’s executive director in Calhoun County, Dana van Ekris, will tell you, is a heavier, more uncertain question:
Will the Calhoun County people who leave the work site next week, stirred by the satisfaction of lifting others out of poor housing, return to the security of their own homes — and forget?
The promise
President Carter, who has taken his annual homebuilding project to places like Mexico, Hungary and Africa, decided to come to Anniston because city and county officials, along with the local Habitat office, have pledged to eliminate all substandard housing in the county by 2020.
The Carter Project aims to energize communities to achieve such goals. Results at previous sites have shown that it is possible.
In Durban, South Africa, where millions live in houses built of dirt and trash, last year’s Carter Project so impressed the city’s officials that they have promised to donate another piece of land to their Habitat workers. They built 100 houses last June, and have set a goal of building 230 more by 2005.
Depending on whom you ask, the annual event’s planning relies on either a logistical masterpiece or a logistical miracle. Since November 2001, when the 2003 event was announced for Anniston and two Georgia towns, countless hours of preparation have gone into this day, this week.
Land for home sites was obtained from the county.
A list of about 500 prospective homeowners was whittled to three dozen.
Thousands of volunteers were gathered.
More than $4 million was raised.
And since February, under the direction of a 22-year-old Heflin man, site preparation, foundation work and the pre-fabrication of 700 walls has been carried out by a revolving door of college spring-breakers, retired senior citizens and well-behaved jail inmates.
Habitat has had a presence in Calhoun County since 1994. Since that time, volunteers have built 80 affordable homes with zero-interest loans for low-income families. Early on, people in the county doubted the program. The poor thought it was a scam. The rich thought the poor would fail to pay their mortgages.
Nine years later, there have been no foreclosures.
Through a family-style involvement with homeowners, Van Ekris and her staff look to continue their record here.
“We want to win people over and get them to stay with us for a long time,” van Ekris said.
But persuading folks to believe in a cause is far easier than motivating them to fight for one.
The need
About 1,500 homes in Calhoun County are substandard, the 2000 U.S. Census reports. 600 don’t have proper heating, 98 don’t have heating at all, and 300 have no indoor plumbing.
If the population count and financial makeup were to stay the same, Habitat would have to host a Carter Project here annually until 2043 to replace every shoddy house. While that is impossible, the Habitat staff is confident substandard housing can be eliminated here in 17 years.
There are other ways to tackle the problem.
Officials at Habitat, which has primarily existed as a homebuilding nonprofit organization until now, know that new structures are not the answer for everybody.
Not everyone can handle the responsibility. Many others already own homes, but those homes are coming apart. So Habitat has added another gear. They have started a repair project.
While van Ekris believes repairs are just as important as building new houses, it may be harder to get people involved. It is less glamorous to work with a few people in an attic than it is to work with a few thousand on an entirely new neighborhood.
But this week Habitat will pull several hundred volunteers to fix up houses in western Anniston, where dozens of structures have corroded plumbing, leaky roofs and poisonous lead paint. While people will always remember the Jimmy Carter Work Project’s 36 homes built, which will house about 90 people, the immediate number of lives improved will be about twice that because of the improvements that will be done to existing houses.
The hope
Eliminating substandard housing for good is like trying to get rid of a thorn bush. As surely as you cut it out, it comes back.
The same will be true over the years with Calhoun County’s housing. One roof will get repaired, someone else’s will cave.
But as it stands today, the problem is still a thicket of tangled issues and unfortunate lives. For almost 10 years, with the support of the local government, Habitat for Humanity has been attacking the mess little by little.
This week, about 50 percent as many homes as Habitat has built here in the past decade will go up. It will brew excitement and it will give people the welling pleasure of civic duty well done. It will be a time to clap, to laugh, to savor.
Thousands have given their money to make this happen. Monday morning they will give their time and their sweat.
And by Friday, when a doctor, a teacher, a banker, a pastor and a student have embraced the families they’ve helped, Habitat hopes they also will have embraced a commitment to do it again and again.
That is the high hope.
This is the pretty certainty:
Jonell Gorman will wheel her son through an extra-wide door.
LaKeitha Jones’ toddler will sleep without coughing.
And Lela Chatman, who used to run when she had to go out to her car at night, will be able to stroll.
