Sustainable Community Development

Boy how time does fly!  It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is just around the corner.  Things have been going very well here in Tucson – been keeping busy with Habitat and have really enjoyed building community with our fellow Tucson YAVs.  I haven’t given an update on my work with Habitat in a while, so thought I would fill everyone in on how things are going.

Lately I have been cleaning the cobwebs from the Engineering Shelves of my brain as I have been working on passing a new set of floor plans through the Southern Arizona Regional Residential Green Building Rating System and the Energy Star v.3 rating system.  In order to do this, I have been working on some plan revisions in AutoCAD, walking the construction sites to document green building techniques and working with a mechanical engineer on the air handling system design.  It has been about a year and a half since I have used my brain in this manner, so this work has been challenging but enjoyable. 

Aside from the work I do with construction, I have been spending the majority of my time at Habitat engaging in community development efforts.  Currently Habitat for Humanity Tucson is working in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Tucson to build relationships with neighborhood residents and community organizations.  We are attempting to get to know the people in the neighborhood to learn their desires and assets for attaining said desires.  We are partnering with the neighborhood association, the city council, police department, churches and various public organizations in order to reach out to a wide audience. 

Our primary method of outreach at the moment is a program called A Brush with Kindness (ABWK) which is an exterior home preservation program to help families who are not able to conduct home repairs on their property for various reasons such as income deficiencies and/or disabilities.  So far we have helped three families through ABWK, each having their own distinct story. 

Most recently, we helped a woman and son who had become overwhelmed by the scale of the repairs and clean-up needed to improve the quality of their home and living environment.  When the two moved into their home, they inherited quite a mess in their backyard and a number of repairs that were not manageable for them.  With the help of 36 volunteers, we were able to do a tremendous amount of work in one day – we cleared their backyard that was essentially a small landfill, replaced fascia around the whole roof, painted the entire exterior of the home and replaced a toilet in the bathroom.  (See photos of the days work below)

Now the above description of the work we did that day sounds wonderful, but the discouraging part of the work was that we were not able to engage any neighborhood residents in the day of service.  We can only consider these events a success if we find a way to engage the neighborhood in actually helping their neighbors, otherwise the program is not sustainable and any difference we make will be short term.  Our goal with neighborhood revitalization in the Sunnyside neighborhood is to create a sustainable environment in which residents are able to care for and maintain their homes and community without the help of outside organizations.  In choosing families for ABWK, we make sure they are willing to volunteer on the work with us, make a financial commitment to the project (to the best of their ability) and try to pay the favor forward by helping out with future ABWK events. 

The process of engaging the neighborhood and its residents is slow, but we are continuing to work at it.  We have our next ABWK event on December 15, and we have planned a fun, family friendly event around it.  Along with the work we will be conducting on a family’s home in the neighborhood, we will be having Santa photos for the neighborhood and a BBQ cookout for people to stop by and get to know Habitat and their neighbors.  We’ll see how it goes!

(Photos courtesy of Ayman Alhajji)