Habitat for Humanity and Riverland partner for homes

By Jason Schoonover

//jason [dot] schoonover [at] austindailyherald [dot] com ">Email the author

Published 10:00 am Sunday, November 29, 2015

AUSTIN — Last week, Freeborn/Mower Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Brigitte Fisher was pleased to look at the progress Riverland Community College students were making on Habitat’s latest Austin build.

“You look around and you see how many busy people there on site today, and this is four days a week that we have this kind of work going on,” Fisher said.

For many years, Habitat for Humanity relied on the work of volunteers for building its houses and often had to hire construction contractors to help lead the work. By the end of a project, Fisher said volunteers were spread pretty thin by the work required.

“We really have struggled with that in the past, with having enough volunteer labor so that we’re not exhausting the volunteers we do have,” she said.

Habitat also had to hire construction contractors to help lead the work, but now Riverland is taking the lead and building the house.

In past years, Riverland students have helped Habitat when they could, but students also built their own house, which they’d sell at the end of the year.

Predominantly, Riverland carpentry students are building the house, but some electrical program students help as well for about 16 total students working on the program.

The college started the project Aug. 24 with several days of demolition on the site before eventually starting construction in mid-September.

The house is a split level, which is one of only a few that Habitat has done, but Riverland carpentry instructor Walt Alms said the split-level design works well with his students’ needs, as it’s a starter level design but includes two stairwells to build in the entryway and enough square footage on the two levels.

Alms said building a house is a perfect learning tool for the students.

“It’s a great house for us for what we need to be doing,” said Alms, who added it’d be costly and complicated to duplicate the same work at the college.

Alms and Tom Wilker are the two carpentry instructors working on the project, and Alms guessed students complete construction work for about 20 to 25 hours a week with about five hours of class time each week.

Riverland’s carpentry program dates to the 1950s, but Alms estimated they started building a house each year as part of the program in the mid-1970s.

This is an excellent article.  To read the entire article, simply click on Habitat for Humanity and Riverland partner for homes .