Houses to be dedicated today
Five Greene County families are already enjoying the new homes they helped build on a new street in Carmichaels with the help of Habitat for Humanity and students from Waynesburg College students. A sixth family is expected to move in to their new house soon.
Keith Davin, director of Greene County Habitat for Humanity, said building the six homes at the same time was the most ambitious and difficult project the organization has undertaken in the county.
The payoff for all the frustration and hard work comes at 11 a.m. today when the six homes will be dedicated in a ceremony in the unoccupied house. The homes are on Cumberland Avenue, a gravel road off of Ceylon Road.
“The whole project was pretty ambitious for us,” Davin said.
Construction was completed some time ago, but a delay in having a sewer line installed to the homes prevented the families from moving in for about a year, he said.
“It was frustrating, but we worked together and got the families in the homes,” Davin said. “We built these six homes and wanted them finished at the same time.”
Families in Habitat’s program spend 350 hours in labor to help build their houses and all six families involved in the latest development also worked on each other’s homes, Davin said.
They received a great deal of help from students at Waynesburg College.
“They’ve done a lot – construction, water lines, hanging kitchen cabinets, cleaning up the yards, grading,” Davin said. “They were involved all along.”
Groups about eight to 10 students put in four-hour days on Saturdays and evenings. They worked “hundreds of hours,” Davin said.
All the houses are ranch style, but each was constructed to meet the families’ needs. Three have four bedrooms, two have two bedrooms and one has three.
“We sell them for what it costs to build them,” Davin said.
Habitat holds zero percent interest 20- to-25-year mortgages on the homes. The homeowners’ mortgage payments, which are based on the families’ incomes, primarily pay for the materials used in construction.
There are no finance charges as long at the families make their monthly mortgage payments.
Each family has an escrow account from which taxes and insurance premiums are paid.
“It’s an excellent deal,” Davin said.
“The buyers pay well under half of the cost of a traditional home purchase.”
He said the volunteer labor and the zero-interest mortgages keep homeowner costs at a minimum.