By Carl Corry
STAFF WRITER
IT'S 9 A.M. on a sunny Saturday in late April,, and a line of cars are
stretched along
Trees had been cleared from the steeply sloping lot, making way for the construction of the foundation and subflooring in advance. Today, it was time to start on the framing.
Joining a group of students from nearby high schools, I approached the cement foundation, where other volunteers were nailing panels of wooden flooring to the subflooring.
Almost drowned out by dozens of volunteers hammering nails into the panels, I met soon-to-be-homeowner Barbara Devlin, 30. She told me earlier on the telephone that she and her husband, Peter, have spent nine years in rented houses and apartments.
"We've had nothing but misery in apartments," she said.
When they first married, the Devlins lived for nearly four years in a
basement apartment in Saint James. When it rained, the bedroom and kitchen
would flood. Then they shared a house with a friend in
Now, the Devlins and their daughters, Kerri, who turns 4 on Monday, and Nicole, 19 months, live in an old house in Nesconset. "The closet walls have holes, water leaks from the living room ceiling and from the porch, tiles are coming up in the kitchen and there's another leak underneath the sink," said Peter Devlin, 32.
Early this year, Peter's mother saw an advertisement seeking eligible applicants for a new home. The Devlins applied and were chosen from out of 15 families interviewed by the selection committee.
To qualify for the
The Devlins' house is the group's first project in
The Devlins, whose income was about $20,000 last year, will work 500 hours as a down payment - Habitat calls it "sweat equity." Half will be spent working on their home and half on another Habitat house. Every Saturday through mid-July, the Devlins will work on their new home alongside high school students, professionals, church members and other volunteers. They will put up a month's mortgage payment and taxes, totaling about $1,000. The Devlins should move into the house, which when completed will have a market value of about $120,000, by the end of July.
Barbara Devlin, a part-time anesthesia aide at
Her husband also was undaunted by the challenge. "I'm used to hard
labor," said Peter Devlin, a bayman who digs clams on the
Suffolk Habitat was established in 1988 as a chapter of the national ecumenical organization that gained nationwide attention when former President Jimmy Carter picked up a hammer and went to work.
Suffolk Habitat uses land donated by towns, and contributions from individuals and corporations to pay for lumber and other materials. "Corporate sponsors are a a big part of our funding," amounting to about half, Metcalf said. The group also raises money through churches and events such as walkathons and golf outings.
When the Devlins' house in
Suffolk Habitat will help develop an entire street in Bellport's economic
development zone next year in cooperation with the Long Island Housing
Partnership, the
Habitat for Humanity of Nassau County has started work on its second house,
in
Kay McKiernan, president of Nassau Habitat, said the group's main problem is
finding property because there is little open land to build new housing in
The group has worked on several small projects to keep volunteers busy, she
said. They include putting on the roof, deck and a ramp at a retirement home in
Back at
Metcalf said students at area high schools helped to raise almost $26,000 toward the $47,500 cost of materials. The movement to get schools involved began four years ago, when Metcalf and Dennis Murphy, Suffolk Habitat's media coordinator, noticed that many volunteers coming out to work were young. He contacted schools to organize chapters.
"We started with about 10 schools the first year," said Murphy, a
professor of education at the C.W. Post Campus of
Arrow Electronics of Melville donated $25,000 to the Devlins' house. This is the second house the company has sponsored, Metcalf said.
After the ceremony, I went back to my pencil line next to Jessica Verga, 16,
who sat cross-legged and used both hands to hammer nails into the flooring,
inching her way up after every nail. Next to her was Jessica LaGrassa, 16. The
girls are members of the
"By the end of the day, you'll have walls, sometimes a second floor on the same day," she said.
After we laid out 2-by-6 boards along the wooden floor, Loehr, the construction coordinator, taught the crew how to "toe-nail" the planks to shape the wall frames. Nails are hammered at an angle into the bottom of each vertical board to nail it to a horizontal base. When four frames were finished, volunteers lifted them into place, framing the house.
"I usually work on a house with four or five guys at most," said
30-year veteran carpenter Kevin Carey, of
"I can't believe we got this far," Barbara Devlin said as she looked in awe at the portion of the wall frame completed before breaking for lunch.
At 1 p.m., after many volunteers had gone, someone noticed that the opening left for a bedroom window was too small. Loehr knocked the beams out with a sledgehammer and quickly replaced them using the proper dimensions.
As the day progressed, more volunteers left, some promising to come back, others offering the Devlins good wishes. By 3 p.m., we had placed panels around the entire house frame.
At the end of the day, my palm was sore from pounding in hundreds of nails. The joke is that every Habitat house has twice the number of nails needed. I put the apron and hammer in the trailer and stepped out to look at what we had done in six hours. What was just a foundation that morning was now the skeletal beginnings of the Devlin home. When completed, the house will include three bedrooms, a large kitchen and dining area, a living room, full basement and attic.
Nate Barlow of Rocky Point, an electronics engineer who designs computer hardware for a living, found Suffolk Habitat by looking up the number in the telephone book. He says he believes he is doing God's work. The Devlins agreed. "I think it's the greatest thing," Peter Devlin said. "It's a blessing."
Habitat's Homes
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY is a national ecumenical organization which began in 1976 and says it will be one of the largest home builders in the nation by the year 2000.
To qualify for a Suffolk County Habitat for Humanity home, a family of four
must earn $25,000 or less, live in the town where the house is to be built and
devote 500 hours of work or "sweatequity" to Habitat, half of it on
their home and half on another house. In
For information, call Nassau Habitat,