IOCC's "Volunteer in the Gulf Coast"

Jim's personal journal from the week.

April 29 - May 5, 2007

Wednesday

Habitat for Humanity doesn’t give anything away. Their theory (which I like, by the way) is that if you don’t have to work for something you probably won’t appreciate it. Because of this, the eventual home owners are involved in the building of the house. That’s how we got to meet and know about Shelby and Seniorita Reimonenq, who will eventually own the house where we installed flooring. They worked on the house every evening, except Wednesday (which was Church Night), and both of them stopped around occasionally during the day.

Of course, the cost of the house is still subsidized. That money comes from all sorts of surprising places. Several Arab countries, for instance, donated millions of dollars to Habitat for Humanity after the Hurricanes. The Reimonenq house was funded by Saudi Arabia.

The Reimonenqs are a working class family who lived in a rental property in Mandeville prior to the Hurricane. A tree crashed through their roof and the landlord never got around to fixing it, leaving the Reimonenqs homeless. They have been on the list for a house from Habitat for a long time. Shelby is a house painter by trade. He was impressed with Habitat and Habitat was impressed with his painting skills. Negotiations began for Shelby to work as a private contractor painting Habitat houses.

At this point, a word of explanation is needed. Certain of the more technical details of house building are left to the professionals. Habitat does not let volunteers do plumbing or electrical (unless they are licensed). Most of that work is contracted out. Painting is also a very technical skill. When volunteers paint houses the results are typically uneven and the Habitat staff frequently has to go back and do the job again. This is both inefficient and expensive. So the St. Tammany West Habitat group contracts out the painting whenever possible. It is cheaper and more time efficient in the long run.

Hiring affordable contractors is a great idea in theory but difficult to work out in real life. Being a non-profit aid agency, Habitat wants to get the job done as inexpensively as possible. They hope that painters will be willing to make less profit since they are working for a good cause. Shelby is a good painter with a good reputation on the North Shore. He has more work than he can handle right now and is trying to hire more people. He also has seven kids. While he would love to contract with Habitat for Humanity in order to give back a little bit of what they have given to him, he probably can’t afford to do it on the money they’re offering. Chances are Shelby will never work for Habitat.

I tell the story in detail because it goes a long way toward answering one of my big misgivings about traveling nearly 1200 miles to volunteer to build a house. The task facing Habitat for Humanity and other rebuilding organizations is massive beyond description. For people living in town there is a fine line between getting involved and getting sucked in and consumed by the need. Shelby would like to help; he also has a responsibility to feed and care for his family. Because his skills are desperately needed by Habitat, if he helped a little bit he would probably get consumed.

The St. Tammany West chapter of Habitat has a volunteer who has worked two days a week for five years. We called him Mr. Jim (to distinguish him from me). Mr. Jim is exactly what Habitat needs because he’s a jack of all trades. No doubt Habitat would love for him to volunteer full time, and he could get sucked in by that need, but he has carefully set his limits. He works two days a week, no matter how big the need. They have another volunteer who’s between jobs. He’s a full time volunteer, but if and when he gets a job, that will end.

Volunteer organizations are like that. They always need more. Give them half a chance and they will suck all the life right out of you. Mr. Jim has figured out how to deal with that. Shelby is sorting through those issues right now, but since he has a household to feed and raise, Habitat may not be a realistic option for him at this time. But volunteers from out of town function in a different context. We come to town for a week, Habitat works us hard, and then we go home and recover. It’s not an ideal model, but it’s a system that makes sense given the dynamics of the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Read Thursday's Journal Entry

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