MHDC
staff drop books, grab hammers
The
Missouri Housing Development Commission embraced a chance to
lend a helping hand Thursday, June 22, when they worked with the
Habitat for Humanity Kansas City for
Operation Home
Delivery. The project is being conducted by the City of Kansas
City, Mo., and Habitat for Humanity Kansas City and built homes
for Hammond, La., families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
The nationwide
Operation Home Delivery program enlists volunteers in cities
across the country to pre-build housing components, package them
in containers and ship them to the Gulf Coast to be permanently
set up. Kansas City’s program, Homes From The Heartland, built
10 homes for the program.
Sixteen
MHDC staff members braved the rain and worked on a four-bedroom,
two bathroom home as part of the Homes from the Heartland
initiative by the Habitat for Humanity. Various volunteer
groups from the Kansas City area spent a half day pre-building
walls, which will then be shipped for completion by Habitat
teams in the Hurricane Katrina disaster area.
MHDC
originally donated $20,000 they received to assist Hurricane
Katrine victims toward the Habitat efforts, but wanted to do
more than just help finance the project. “What a great idea,
the housing people building a house,” Wendell Heyen, MHDC
architect and volunteer day foreman said”. The money was
provided to MHDC by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines.
Although
MHDC has a handful of carpentry gifted employees, Habitat
workers helped construct the walls and teach the housing
professionals. “I
really think Habitat went out of their way to make it a special
day for everyone … they were more than happy to teach us how to
use the nail gun and put together a wall according to the
blueprints. Simply awesome,” Deanna Fox said.
Kansas
City hadn’t seen rain in weeks, but a majority of the
construction that day was done in the rain. For safety reasons,
a few breaks were taken, but completion was accomplished in a
downpour.
MHDC
employees have embarked on what they hope will be a continuing
campaign for staff to get more involved in service-related
activities in the local community.
###
Other
contacts:
Habitat
for Humanity Kansas City -
http://habitatkc.org/ - Yahna Gibson –
816.924.1096
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MHDC is the
state's housing finance agency. The Commission is dedicated to
strengthening communities and the lives of Missourians through
the financing, development and preservation of affordable
housing. Since 1969, MHDC has encouraged and assisted in the
production of affordable rental housing and provided
homeownership opportunities for thousands of families while
investing almost $4 billion in Missouri housing for rental
housing developments, home mortgages, home improvement loans,
loans to landlords for renovations, grants to neighborhood
housing groups and other programs. MHDC does not build or
renovate housing itself; rather, it functions as a bank,
providing financing directly to borrowers or through a network
of private lending institutions. Most of MHDC's programs operate
as a public-private partnership.
