Hi Supporter, Family and Friends: Today is Wednesday in New Orleans. We have had two full days of work - painting, sweeping up rooms that were finished with painting, unloading a truck with all the cabinets for 2 houses, moving huge pieces of sheetrock (about 40or 50) to be picked up, putting up insulation under a house and all kinds of other things too numerous to mention. It is real work - just as I expected.
There are 27 of us all together. We meet at the worksite at 8:00 a.m. to hear what we will do that day and divide into work groups. Some are putting up siding, some painting siding, some caulking, some nailing up the roof of the porch, pulling weeds and moving junk from the site where 7 houses are in all stages of being built. Three are completed and two people settled on their homes today. Three will be in for Thanksgiving and I think all of the other 4 before Christmas.
Yesterday I had a chance to talk with one of the new owners who was working off his 70 plus hours of sweat equity his family has to do before they move in. But before this all Habitat owners have gone through a rigorous learning about debt and personal finance. They have to be debt free and be able to handle the mortgage ($75,000 in New Orleans and I think $105,000 in Wilmington.) The process that these families go through is so thorough that they are trained to be home owners and will be great citizens that will care about their community because the houses are built in clusters providing a support system for each other.
The church that is sponsoring our crew provided us with a wonderful meal last night with all typical New Orleans food. And tonight again they will feed us as well as provided us with lunch on Tuesday. Thursday night we will go to private homes of church members. They having been doing this drill for going on 3 years now. And they are so grateful for us - amazing and so humbling to see such dedicated people.But also we have run into natives here when we have been picking up things or leaving the hotel and they all have thanked us. People in New Orleans are very grateful for the work crews that come to work in their city.And we have driven through the city going to the church and have seen majestic beautiful homes that probably had little damage - but not many blocks away are empty boarded up houses up and down the streets. These are the people who had meager shotgun type houses and have not been able to come back to New Orleans.
One man I talked to today told me the street over from where we are working is all empty. I walked over there today and house after house is empty, boarded up and some with doors open and furniture piled up that can be seen through the open door. One house on the street is being gutted and worked on. The street and block where we are working has two original houses, one lived in and one empty. Habitat has several sites all over the city and over 100 houses being built per year.We will take a tour on Thursday afternoon to see where the devastation has taken its toll. Some of the volunteers have come back for 3 times from Rochester, New York and 3 of our group are back for the second time. they have seen life come back to the city.
But it has a long way to go for the poorest of its natives. Two different people shared their stories of paying between 3 and 400$ for their rent to find the place that they came back to had the rent raised to 800-900$/month.
Thank you again for your donation. Several of our participants would not be here if they had to pay for their way. I feel blessed to have your support, friendship and love.
Till next time, Annabelle
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