Spring of Life’s 21st Habitat for Humanity house will be celebrated with a public dedication event Saturday, June 15, in Elgin.
The Rev. Jack Wheatley of Elgin’s Greater Grace Community Church will be on hand at 10 a.m. to bless the 1563 Mark Ave. residence, and the new homeowners will be presented with flowers, candles, a prayer shawl and a memory book of photos, organizers said.
“Events like this frequently draw people currently living in Habitat-built homes,” said Laura Johnson, a Habitat volunteer from Inverness who helped build the house. “It will be a beautiful experience for everyone.”
Spring of Life, mostly made up of congregation members from six churches in the Palatine and Arlington Heights areas, has been partnering with Habitat for Humanity of Northern Fox Valley for almost 30 years, Johnson said. Of the 21 houses they’ve built so far, 18 have been in Elgin.
Johnson is a nurse by profession, and became involved in the effort seven years ago she was looking to do volunteer work outside of her comfort zone and friends invited her to give it a shot, she said.
She’s worked on seven homes thus far and has found she’s particularly good at painting and caulking, she said.
“I turned out to be more handy than I thought,” she said.
Habitat for Humanity’s mission is to build affordable housing for families who can’t otherwise afford to buy a home. Most of the work is done by volunteers and some of the supplies come from or are paid for through donations. Families chosen to receive a home pay for it with an interest-free loan and are required to put in a minimum of 250 hours of sweat equity.
Of the Spring of Life houses, a core group of about 30 volunteers help with construction and raise money to pay for what’s needed, Johnson said.
“John Wise, of Palatine, oversaw the Elgin project as our foreman,” volunteer Lee Kingdon said. “He worked in the trades, and this was his 11th project volunteering with us. He oversees everything from permits and paperwork to the construction. He’s amazing.”
Kingdon and her husband, Richard, helped organize the Spring of Life group when they and other members of All Saints Lutheran Church in Palatine started looking for a way to address the lack of affordable housing in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, she said.
“It’s a daunting task, and we soon realized working with Habitat for Humanity would be the best approach,” said Kingdon, who now lives in Mundelein.
While the vast majority of the houses are in Elgin, two are in Carpentersville and one is in DesPlaines. The latter came about because a bank in Des Plaines wanted to get involved in a Habitat project, Kingdon said.
The group has honed its skills to the point where they can typically build a house a year, she said. The Mark Avenue project took about twice that amount, however, because soil testing on the donated lot showed the foundation would require footings and while installing them, workers found another foundation buried deep underground.
“No one has figured out how there was another foundation there 35 feet below the surface,” Kingdon said.
With three bedrooms and two bathrooms on a single floor, the house is designed as an “aging in place” residence in which a family is meant to live over a long period of time. They’re built to not only be affordable, but energy efficient, she said.
The new owner, whose name has not been disclosed, not only put in the requisite 250 hours of work, but had extended family members volunteering their time as well, Johnson said.
People who qualify to be Habitat homeowners have to take classes about what’s involved in home ownership, covering everything from maintenance to budgeting for utilities, mortgages and taxes.
“It’s a hand up, not a handout,” Johnson said.
Johnson and Kingdon said that in addition to the camaraderie they’ve found being involved with Spring of Life, they enjoy meeting, working with and getting to know the families for whom they are building homes.
“This makes a huge difference in their lives,” said Johnson, who noted their 22nd project begins in Elgin in August.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
