A part of South Bend hit hard by housing demolitions over the years is getting some new attention from Habitat for Humanity and Notre Dame.
The sound of hammers hitting nails filled the air Tuesday morning in the 700 block of Harrison Avenue on South Bend’s northwest side. It’s a block like many in the neighborhood where scattered homes have been demolished over the years, leaving empty lots that look like missing teeth on a once pretty smile.
Notre Dame is again partnering with Habitat for Humanity, this time to build a set of five homes in a row. Students, faculty and staff have helped frame four of the homes, and they were working on raising the fifth one’s exterior walls Tuesday.
Jim Williams, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County, says housing affordability has reached a crisis level as wages aren’t keeping pace with housing costs. At the same time, Habitat’s facing the same spikes in building material costs.
"We're not discouraged though," Williams said. "We're needed now more than ever, and our families need us now more than ever, but we're putting them in brand new, energy-efficient houses for less than $1,000 a month. You can't rent a two-bedroom apartment in St. Joseph County for less than $1,000 a month."
In addition to building, Williams said Habitat is increasingly embracing advocacy, lobbying local and state leaders to enact policies to make home ownership easier, including maintaining ownership. While they have low monthly payments, Williams said Habitat clients, like everyone else, have seen huge property tax increases as market values have soared since the pandemic.
As an example, Williams said homes Habitat built six years ago with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in Mishawaka appraised for about $130,000 when they were finished. Today the exact same floor plan and house appraises for $260,000.
"For our families, low to moderate income, to have an extra few hundred dollars a month that you have to pay in property taxes, that's a big deal," Williams said. "So we are working with local legislators and letting them be aware of the situation, and seeing if we can work out solutions."
Notre Dame is calling this year’s building “Inauguration Build 2024” in honor of their new president, the Reverend Robert Dowd, who was inaugurated on Friday. Wearing a hard hat, blue jeans and boots, Dowd fiercely drove in a nail while noting with a laugh that he’s generally not very handy.
Speaking more seriously, Dowd said the build exemplifies a theme from his inaugural speech of building more bridges between the campus and community.
"Not to just to literally build houses, but to actually build community, and that's what I love about this project," Dowd said. "So I'm excited about what we're going to be able to do moving forward at Notre Dame. I think it's incredibly important that we bring our research to bear on this challenge in our society."
Notre Dame has one of the nation’s largest and oldest college student Habitat for Humanity chapters. In fact, Williams says some of the first families that Notre Dame students helped 25 years ago now have their mortgages paid off.
Those first Habitat builds happened before junior Billy Bonnist was born. The co-president of Notre Dame’s Habitat for Humanity student club, first volunteered with Habitat in high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
"Home ownership is such an important facet of life, something that all people deserve to have," Bonnist said. "Home ownership, as we heard today, can create generational wealth. It's a key to a better life for a lot of people."
Of course, those swinging hammers Tuesday included the people who will live in the homes, like Leslie Kaminsky. She recalled the sadness she felt when her daughter, now a teenager, would ask her why they couldn’t live in some of the beautiful homes they drove by.
Habitat likes to say it offers a hand up, not a handout. Kaminsky said that’s true.
"You have to volunteer. You get to volunteer at various places that they have," she said. "There's the Restore. You can volunteer in people's homes. There's things you can do online. But there's so much involved to it. You have to commit to it if you want to be a part of it."
Kaminsky says she and her daughter have been told their home should be ready to move into this Spring.
