It is true here in Texas. I worked on “crews” that were pretty much assembled at the day labor place each morning. I dug trenches for septic lines.
Habitat For Humanity volunteer work - Do they just tear it down later to use a professional builder?
I have served as a crewleader for the following HfH:
HfH Hartford CT
HfH Kingston NY
HfH New Orleans
HfH Baton Rouge
…as well as the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders in East Texas. At none of these locations did we discard volunteer work as long as it was suitable. There are crewleaders on site who are experienced in carpentry supervising the volunteers. It varies from Habitat to Habitat, but skilled work such as electric wiring, plumbing, etc. will usually be contracted out, and Baton Rouge contracted their frames. But no, none of them allowed volunteers to put in shoddy work ‘to feel better about themselves’ and then tore it down. It would be costly in both labor (many wasted hours) and materials. And I’ve seen HfH houses in all stages of construction, from the slab being poured to framing to shingling to handing the keys to the homeowner. I’ve probably worked on about 30 Habitat houses in total.
And yes, sometimes Habitat homes are the only ones left standing after a natural disaster. We like to say that it’s because in a situation where a contractor would use 2 nails, a volunteer will put in 2 nails, look at it and decide it doesn’t look secure enough, and then hammer in about 10 more. All the houses I worked on are ROCK SOLID, I promise you.
There’s a lot of myths and misinformation about Habitat, and I’ll be glad to shed some light on any questions y’all may have.
I don’t think that ditch diggers are “the kind of people who build houses all the time.”
My ex worked for HH under a Americorp program. It was 6 Americorp’s who were given a two week training program to work with with HH. They were trained in basic construction and managing volunteers. These were paid(although not much) positions. Habitat also had a paid general contractor. Talking to him he made less then he could elsewhere, but the feel good aspect of it and the pay was enough to keep him at it. He oversaw the 6 Americorps.
With that workforce they were capable of building homes without volunteers. The 6 Americorps including my BF were defiantly not as good as a regular framing crew when it came to skill and efficiency but could get the job done.
The Americorp’s worked whether they had volunteers or not. When they had volunteers there was more then enough people to supervise them and there were no cases of them undoing volunteer work after the day was over. The houses were all built well. The efficiency of building them was fairly poor. I as someone skilled in the trades preferred not to work on volunteer days as it was more people to get in the way and they got less done.
Honestly I think the time volunteers put it could be better spent elsewhere like searching for donations then paying skilled labor to build the houses. Having volunteers build the houses is certainly a feel good project. Although inefficient in my opinion HH does build solid structures and no one is coming behind them having to fix it.
Roofing nails are only a couple inches length on average. Frame construction is about 5 inches length for average size.
As for volunteers time and experience may be the only thing they can give. Not everybody can get money.
Good idea, I think the one we have was in the $300 range at Home Depot about 10 years ago. You might even be able to get a building supply company to donate a few to the local habitat people to be issued to volunteers during building.
Miss Piggy? A single karate chop.
Nitpick: a 16d nail is 3-1/2" long. I have heard of framers who can sink them on a second strike, though I assume that they’re going into spruce, not Southern Pine.
I’ve done a lot of Habitat work and the work is always supervised by people who know code and make sure it is all up to code. The only work we had professionals come in and do is electrical, most plumbing and flooring. Everything was done under supervision. If there weren’t enough pros to supervise all the volunteers, the volunteers would do stuff that didn’t really have a “code” like painting or digging or cleaning.
What a misguided comment!
The people building all those houses have a wide range of skill sets, like any office environment, commercial kitchen or engineering firm etc.
The people on site have highly skilled journeymen, and varying levels of apprentices ----and some laborers. Just like any other business.
I hold the Habitat Trifecta: Volunteer, AmeriCorps, Staff.
One important point that most people don’t understand is that all Habitat Affiliates are independent. Yes, there are rules and standards that are nationwide, but many decisions are made purely at a local level. So, your experience in Rochester, NY could be wildly different than San Diego, CA. Some affiliates might struggle to build one house every 2 years, others might build dozens or hundreds. Some might only have volunteer staff, some might have a huge professional construction staff.
Now, to my own experience. Within my first week of volunteering, I had put a roof on with a group of teenage girls, later I finished that same house as an Americorps. No, we didn’t rip the roof off and start over. Never had any complaints about that roof, either.
Yes, volunteers are slower than paid contractors. Yes, they make mistakes that have to be fixed. But it is their dedication and enthusiasm that makes Habitat possible. There are a myriad of jobs that volunteers can do with little training, and many more that they can be taught. Most valuable are our “Regular” volunteers come out every Saturday, month in, month out. Often these folks are crewleaders and they’re what makes Habitat go.
In 2003, I was a crewleader in the AmeriCorps Build-a-Thon, 400 AmeriCorps built 20 houses in 7 days. Most exhausting, exhilirating week of my life. Although we were technically paid, we were essentially volunteers. Many of us had little more experience than the average HFH volunteer. But we got the job done.