Springfield News-Sun
By Tom Stafford
Sunday, February 7, 2010

If you’ve considered helping Habitat for Humanity, but haven’t picked up a hammer or made a sandwich, Dawn Stutz says this is the time.

Those who volunteer now, the director of the Clark County affiliate says, may be involved in more than helping a deserving family build a home. They may help a Springfield neighborhood resist decay and decline.

Volunteers and families interested in owning Habitat homes are invited to a city hall forum at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10, to meet the Habitat Road Trip Crazies.

Representatives of the group that travels around the nation will help Clark County Volunteers frame in two Habitat homes on Linden Avenue on May 1 and 2 — the first of six Habitat will build in the Grand Avenue South neighborhood.

“We’re convinced that everybody wants to help others,” said Tom Gerdy, a Crazies organizer, from his Virginia home. “We just need to make the first step an easy one.”

The goal of the two-day blitz “is to get as much under roof as possible,” he said. “The outside is nearly always complete.”

As important as the construction, he said, will be that the Crazies give others the chance to “feel the feeling” of helping their neighbors.

Stutz said she hopes to recruit 100 local volunteers on each of the two days. Although “we’re looking for electricians, roofers and siders,” she said, volunteers also are needed to make lunches, pass out food, and help with parking and other logistics.

With plans to build at least four more homes (and likely more) in the neighborhood, “we’re really looking long term” in recruiting, Stutz said.

The Blitz Build of May 1 and 2 will serve as the unofficial kickoff the city’s $2.27 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program in the area bounded by Grand Avenue, Catherine Street, Limestone Street and Tibbetts Avenue.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the program will build and rehabilitate homes, demolish blighted structures enlisting city government, nonprofits and volunteers to help.

“The city has big plans for that neighborhood,” said Brian Potts, a member of the Habitat Board of Directors. With the first step toward those plans scheduled for Wednesday, “We think it will be a fun event.”