Habitat for Humanity has built homes in the Black Hills and western South Dakota for nearly 30 years. Each year the nonprofit organization puts up between six and ten homes. That makes a huge difference for new homeowners...but there’s still an enormous need for affordable houses in the area.
Habit for Humanity builders have a tight deadline to finish this three-bedroom home. Today’s task in the two story house is the kitchen.
“Beautiful kitchen guys, it’s looking good. So how much longer before this kitchen’s wrapped up?”
The Black Hills Area nonprofit employs a group of construction workers and gets help from nearly 700 volunteers a year. Today, staff member Jon Fiester helps install some dark wood cabinets.
“Kitchen’s probably a few more days. We’ll have the cabinets set today and then we will get a counter top made and then that’ll be in probably a day or so.”
The organization builds homes from the ground up and also does restoration and preservation projects for qualifying homeowners. Projects happen all over the Black Hills, from Belle Fourche to Pine Ridge.
The Black Hills Area Habitat group builds between six and ten new homes each year. It takes between six month and two years to complete each one. Crews started work on this three-bedroom home in April. It needs to be finished by the end of 2018 so the organization can qualify for housing grants again next year.
Terry Hoey is one of Habitat’s construction staff members. He’s worked on these projects for just over a year and is also a construction engineer for the National Guard.
“For us that’s a very tight schedule because volunteers come and go as they can and their skill levels very so much. For a regular construction company-shoot, a year is nothing. But for us it’s a big deal.”
Hoey is usually in charge of restoration and repair projects. This is the first home he’s helped build.
“Since I was part of this from the ground up starting with the foundation what stands out to me is there’s a very solid foundation in this home which will make it last a lot longer.”
The walls are finished with a textured drywall and painted white. They’ll cover the raw, wooden subfloors with stack of faux wood vinyl floorboards. More than 50 volunteers have helped work on this house.
Scott Engmann is the Executive Director for the Black Hills Area Habitat for Humanity. He walks upstairs to a second story bedroom and points out of a window overlooking the residential street.
“To look out and see the first home that we built- a single story, standard ranch look-compared to this home which is a little more contemporary with some more modern materials involved and energy efficiencies. The organization’s come a long way in the last Quarter Century.”
Engmann says the nonprofit has built 104 houses in the region in nearly 30 years.
“One of the things that we find is many of the families that we’re building for have dreamt of actually owning a home. It’s kind of been that far off, distant possibility that really hasn’t seemed very realistic. So when it comes time to actually become a homeowner, they just really don’t have a clear sense of what their responsibility is going to be.”
The organization requires each adult member of the family to take a 250 hour course called Sweat Maintenance before moving into a home. Volunteers teach people how to take care of housing issues themselves like basic plumbing and electrical problems.
Engmann says this saves homeowners money in the long run. He says that’s important since the West River housing market is tough.
“Let’s face it-housing costs, the hard costs just to get the materials has gone up so much it’s really beyond what many people can afford. In fact about 35 percent of residents in Rapid City are paying more than 30 percent of their gross monthly income on housing which we found over time that means they’re not going to have enough money for other important things in their lives.”
Engmann says the organization struggles to get access to affordable land in the area. They rely on donations and grants from local corporations and individuals to help fill the housing need.
Black Hills Area Habitat for Humanity is currently running a project called the 35 Hundred Homes Campaign. Engmann says that’s how many affordable homes it would take to fill the local housing need. Habitat is asking people to create paper houses and post them on social media or donate them to the organization’s Restore store front. The goal is to create a visual representation of the housing need.
“We want to be looking at how we as a community can be impacting the affordable homeownership space. Making sure that our civic leaders, our business leaders our educators are all moving together with an awareness of what the need truly is and in a sense-understanding that if we don’t plan for meeting that need-what that’s going to mean for the future of our community.”
Engmann says this new three-bedroom house is part of their everyday work. He says they’re hoping to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy from Rapid City by the middle of December...so a family can turn it into a home in the new year.