Category Archives: Habitat For Humanity

The Builder’s Ball is the annual fundraising gala for Homes For Family, where I used to work. (Here, here, and here, plus probably some more.)

The key phrase there is “used to work.” What’s up?

Well, I went to several Builder’s Balls before I worked there because The Long Suffering Wife was on their Board of Directors for several years. Then I worked there for four years or so. We’re still friends with some of the Board members, and I still keep in touch with several of my co-workers from my time there. We got an invite to go, so…

I will say, it was great to see people there, many of whom I hadn’t seen in person in three and a half years. (COVID helped that delay.) It was interesting seeing the event when I wasn’t working it.

Now it’s time to make sure I get together for lunch with some of my old friends from there. They were working tonight, we need time to schmooze and hang out and catch up. And not wait another three and a half years.

We (i.e., Homes for Families, i.e., Habitat For Humanity San Fernando/Santa Clarita Valleys, i.e., where I work as Director of Finance) have a new housing project that’s getting ready to start. We build affordable homes for low-income veterans – this will be a tract of 56 homes in Palmdale, California.

Palmdale is in the Antelope Valley, in the far northern part of Los Angeles County, about 35 miles north of the San Fernando Valley and  55 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles (as the freeways wind through the passes). It’s considered “low desert,” only about 2,300 feet above sea level, but definitely desert.

July + desert = HOT

It wasn’t that bad – with the breeze it only felt like 99°!

Space in the shade under the tent was at a premium as we set up.

Yes, right now it’s 9+ acres of dirt, weeds, some dumped trash, and no doubt a few reptiles who would prefer we weren’t there. But rest assured, I’ll be posting pictures as we go – in a couple of years there will be fifty-six veteran families with new homes here.

Fancy gold shovels for the ceremonial events.

But first we got speeches. Politicians from the local, county, state, and federal levels were all here, as well as local sponsors, representatives from various local veteran organizations and groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, members of the free press, and families from our existing projects in Santa Clarita. We even had a couple of the local beauty pageant queens present.

Hunt Braley, our Board Chariman, was speaking here. To the left behind him is Representative Steve Knight, along with Theresa Gunn (CalVet Deputy Secretary), and Jim Ledford (Palmdale mayor).

Everyone did their best to stick to the schedule and keep their speeches short. (If you’re wearing a suit in 102°, you’ll keep it short too, even if it only feels like 99° with the breeze.) Then it was time for the ceremonial groundbreaking, some cool drinks, snacks, and a mad dash for air conditioning.

The turnout was great, the speeches short but sincere, the event a wonderful success.

Now to start building homes!

Last year about this time (not a coincidence) I shared pictures of our annual Habitat for Humanity WE (Women’s Empowerment) Build. This year we once again had something like 300 women out on our Santa Clarita construction site, working to put low-income veterans into homes.

There were a couple of groups pouring concrete, including this group putting in a stretch of sidewalk. Other groups poured curbs and V-ditches (for drainage).

One group was putting stucco on retaining walls.

The group I was working with all day was putting up fencing. Here’s a picture from VERY early at the beginning of the day…

…when all that was up were the posts and cross braces which had been installed earlier in the week.

We had teams of four women, each responsible for building about 40′ of fencing.

We used screws for the assembly, with the power drills being both easier to use, cheaper, and much safer than nail guns.

As with much of the work done at a WE Build, women who had rarely (if ever) done this sort of construction work were pros as it within a couple of hours.

Keep it level with the plumb lines at the top, keep the spacing consistent, keep it squared up and level.

While it may have taken a half hour or more to place the first two or three planks, by lunch time the teams had turned into lean, mean fencing machines.

By the end of the day, hundreds of linear feet of fencing were done and we had all actually moved beyond the initial goals and were well into the “bonus” section of fencing – and coming damn close to finishing it as well!

Between all of the different work teams, not only did the donations for the event add up to many tens of thousands of dollars, but the work done was worth almost $100,000 that we would have otherwise had to pay to a subcontractor!

A good time was had by all! And I might have picked up enough sun to leave me still re-radiating in the infrared as bright as a quasar.

Whatever it was, it was patriotic!

That first day back at work after nine days off? Wowzers, it’s a doozy!

Today I took names. Tomorrow I’ll kick asses. I could be doing this backwards.