When a dozen Elgin Community College students signed up to devote their precious week of spring break building a house for a family who needs it, they knew they were giving up the chance to spend the week lolling on a tropical beach. But when Ma Nature turned the experience into pounding nails and sawing wood in rain and snow as stiff winds blew 30-degree air past them and the sun hid behind clouds, that seemed to be really amplifying their sacrifice.
The students were participating in what Elgin Community College calls its “Alternative Spring Break.” They worked eight hours a day all week to help rehab a 120-year-old house on Division Street in the Elgin Historic District, so that it can become the home of a family who immigrated to the Elgin area from Africa.
As they replaced wooden siding, identical twins Jason and Jeremy Bauer of Elgin felt right at home with the volunteer work.
“We do a lot of projects around the house with our dad,” said Jeremy, as he nursed a finger that he had just smashed under one of his own hammer blows. “We’ve helped him redo the kitchen and install new windows and out in a brick patio.”
In fact, Jeremy said, he and Jason both plan to transfer from Elgin Community College to Illinois State University next fall and major in construction management, doing this kind of thing for a living.
Kristina Hernandez of Algonquin also had no experience with the kind of circular saw she was using to cut pieces of porch frame. But she might be using a different kind of saw in her future career. After taking pre-med classes at Elgin Community College, she wants to become a surgeon.
Tirzah Nikolaou, a nursing major from Bartlett, said she had worked on another Habitat for Humanity project at the age of 15 while on a church mission trip to Kentucky .
But most of the other students had little to no construction experience. “This is the first time I’ve done anything like this,” said Jennifer Bahena of Carpentersville, a human services major. “My first job Monday was driving nails with an air gun, working on the boards on the porch.”
“The weather certainly has been fighting us,” said Lisa Cooper, an environmental sciences and anthropology student from South Elgin. She said the team at least got to work behind a tarpaulin to keep the rain and wind away one afternoon.
Travis Juracek, the Habitat for Humanity construction manager supervising the volunteers, said the group has been working sine last May on the home at 484 Division St., as well as a house around the corner on Channing Street.
Juracek said the organization picks out some of the “worst of the worst” rundown homes in a neighborhood, buys them at a low price, then guts them and totally rebuilds them. The group must hire professionals to do electrical work, heating, asbestos removal and second-floor roofing. But volunteers like the Elgin Community College kids do most of the work.
Then each house is sold to a family who has trouble affording what Habitat refers to as “simple, decent and affordable housing.” The family gets a bargain price for the house but must contribute 250 to 500 hours of “sweat equity” by working on it or other Habitat projects. Family members also must have enough income to pay back a low-interest mortgage loan from the Habitat affiliate that, together with donations, covers the cash expense of the building materials and professional tradesmen.
When it’s finished in about June, the Division Street house will become the home of John and Emilly Tumwesigye and their children, ages 6 and 8. John Tumwesigye came to the U.S. from Uganda five years ago.
“I learned about Habitat about two years ago when I volunteered to work on the house of a friend, who was going to be a Habitat owner,” the father said in a Habitat press release. “I was very moved by the fact that the homeowner participates in building the house. I felt it gave a special sense of attachment and of knowing and owning your house.”
Juracek said the local Habitat affiliate, Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Fox Valley, covers an area from Algonquin on the north to Route 47 on the west, Valley View on the south and Des Plaines on the east. But almost all the homes it builds or rehabs are in Elgin, Carpentersville or Valley View.
The group did nine homes last year and hopes to finish 11 this year.
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Juracek said rehabbing the Division Street house posed some special challenges and costs because it’s in the Elgin Historic District. Because of the district’s historic preservation rules, for example, the workers had to use wooden windows instead of their usual vinyl ones. The porch had to be replaced with one that had architecture similar to the original 1890s version.
“With all the bad news in the world, it’s good to see kids give up their spring break for something like this, and give back,” Juracek said.