Habitat for Humanity House is Being Transformed

Tuesday Patch.com celebrated the launching of its 100th site by sending its employees out to volunteer in their communities.

For me, it was a Habitat for Humanity  Greater San Francisco. The non-profit organization is doing its first project in San Rafael. It's a renovation of a single-family home at 21 Stevens St.  just off of Lincoln Avenue.

I had volunteered there in May, less than two weeks after joining Patch so it was interesting to come back and see the progress they had made. 

So much work had been done. The garage I had been helping to drywall (learned how to use a screw gun) was finished. Appliances were installed upstairs and bedrooms and bathrooms were close to be completed. 

Fellow Patchers Lauren Baxter and Abbie Feinbush joined me in hauling materials and equipment out of the house and yard and into a Habitat truck, to be driven to the next project in Novato.

When I was there in May, we had about a dozen AOL-wide volunteers at work, so this was a very different experience, especially since we got to work side-by-side with the purchaser, Bonnie Lowrance. When we arrived, she was applying sealant to seams in an overhang  out  back. 

Bonnie is a single mother with two daughters, 13 and 8. She works for Homeward Bound in Novato and hads been a renter for the last nine years. She applied to become a Habitat homeowner earlier this year and was taken by surprise in May, when a fellow worker, on the Habitat board, called her and said she had been selected. 

When she got off the phone, Bonnie walked up to her daughters and said, "We have a house."

The girls started crying and Bonnie started crying. You know how that is.

Bonnie will put in 500 hours of "sweat equity" as part of her eligibility to become a Habitat for Humanity homeowner. 

"I haven't been here as much as I would like to be because of work," Bonnie said. She is impressed with the number of volunteers that have made her dream home a reality.

One of them is a former Homeward Bound client who is retired.

"It's a way of giving back," Bonnie said.

Site manager Sarah Van Hoey said the house in San Rafael was the first chance Habitat had to get a foot in the door in San Rafael. The home was a foreclosure purchased for $297,000. Habitat put more than  $50,000 into renovations.

To keep prices affordable, Habitat acquires land by donation or with matching grants. In this case, she said, the organization will probably eat part of the cost as a way to make strides into Marin, where new development locations are scarce.

"We have never been able to do new construction in Marin," Sarah said. "The rehabs have been a good way to come into Marin. We hope to get more in the future."

To qualify to buy a home, the applicant must earn 40 to 60 percent of the area's median income, have good credit and the ability to afford the mortgage payments. They are selected by a committee that assesses need, and are expected to be a good neighbor and help promote the program. They do not have rights to decide design choices.

Reasonable enough to Bonnie. She's hoping to move in by mid-October.