Volunteers unite to build
affordable homes



BY RACHEL MONAHAN


Nine New York City families have a dream. And that dream - of home ownership - came a little closer to being realized during the Martin Luther King Day weekend.
As Brooklyn celebrated the slain civil rights leader with a variety of commemorations, the future homeowners spent the long weekend with 150 Habitat for Humanity volunteers, building affordable condos at Halsey St. and Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Affordable housing "is an economic justice issue of our age," said Roland Lewis, executive director of Habitat for Humanity. "I think that if Dr. King were alive today he might very well be hammering away with us."

This year marked New York Habitat's eighth annual home-raising on the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

The organization has built more than 170 homes in New York City since 1984 for first-time homeowners who can't afford the market rate.

Household income for a family of four generally has to be between $35,450 and $56,700 to qualify with Habitat.

Future owners are required to assume monthly payments of not more than 30% of their income and put in 300 hours of "sweat equity" - helping build their homes - for each adult instead of a down payment.

Sharmor Boyd, 35, a collections analyst and future owner, started work a week ago, building stairs and learning how to frame walls.

"[I'm] getting to know how to do things that I would have had to call a contractor for," she said. "I like it because I get to watch it from the very beginning."

By year's end, she expects to move out of the one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights that she shares with seven other people into a three-bedroom condo for her daughter, aunt and herself.

Originally published on January 23, 2007