A bunch of houses are going up on South Utica Street in Waukegan just north of 10th Street. The workers look like they know what they are doing as they hammer the siding and tape the drywall.
But on any given day, the house builders might include a pharmacist and a photographer, retired business executives and church group teenagers.
All are volunteers with Habitat for Humanity Lake County, working to provide decent homes for hard-working but poor families.
And, as with Wildwood volunteer Pete McCarthy, a financial analyst at Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago, they get on-the-job training.
“I have no idea what to do. This is my first time. I just do what they tell me,” McCarthy said. Why come? “There was a call out (at Abbott) asking for people, and I like helping,” he said.
He was working alongside Vernon Hills carpenter Doug Broxham and experienced Habitat builder Bob Boyack of Waukegan, both members of The Chapel, a non-denominational church in Grayslake.
“God has called us to serve people in need. There is a definite need for good, affordable housing,” Broxham said.
Boyack stopped sawing to explain why Chapel members volunteer at Habitat. “It’s a way for us to show God’s love. We’re helping to build a community,” Boyack said.
That includes houses for people like Waukegan dad Jesus Arias, a technician with Model International in Lake Bluff. Arias hopes to move his wife and four children, ages 4 to 16, in early November from their crowded two-bedroom apartment into the Habitat house worked on by the Chapel crew.
On this particular day, Arias was a member of that crew. At other times, depending on his own work schedule, Arias nails and paints on his and other houses with other volunteers as part of Habitat’s requirement that recipients contribute 500 hours of sweat equity.
“I want to help. I’ll do anything they tell me to do,” he said.
The people working on Arias’ house are among about 50 volunteers of varying ages and backgrounds who had come out on a recent weekday to help Habitat finish putting up four houses in the 600 block of Utica before winter.
Some of the labor and much of the materials and funds have been provided by the Minneapolis-based Target Stores, which is sponsoring Arias’ house with the City of Waukegan; Abbott, Lake-Forest-based Moore Corp. (office forms and business communications) and a group of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff churches are sponsoring the other three houses.
Bringing together people of different professions and economic and social backgrounds is an integral part of Habitat’s mission, according to Lake County Director Julie Donovan. “We are not just building homes; we are building communities,” Donovan said. “People who probably would not be talking to each other are working side by side.”
Her organization’s mission statement reads: “Habitat for Humanity . . . aims to break down the walls that divide people, and, instead, to build up a sense of community among people of diverse colors, religions and economic classes who live in Lake County and throughout the world.”
That concept attracted Deerfield volunteers Kathy Haberkamp, an assistant at the Austrian Trade Commission in Chicago, and her husband, Doug, a photographer. The Haberkamps are members of Sonshine, a community service association organized by several churches in Highland Park and Deerfield that, among other things, sends money and volunteers to Habitat.
“Until we became involved through our church, I just knew Habitat was something that (former President) Jimmy Carter was connected with,” Doug Haberkamp said.
As they walked from their car to the Abbott house, Kathy Haberkamp explained why they now come as often as possible. “It’s a wonderful community effort to help families live in a place they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford,” she said. “And you learn a lot and meet a lot of people.”
About 10 like-minded volunteers from the Great Lakes Naval Hospital’s Medical Service Corps were ready to help in any way they were told, as they gathered, tools in hand, at the Moore Corp. house.
Great Lakes Pharmacy director Roger Hirsh, who had driven from Kenosha with his 15-year-old daughter, Jenny, liked that the houses would go to working families.
“In this day and age, you never know what the economy is going to do or who is going to need help. And these people are working hard. They do not want welfare. This is the only way these people can get help to have decent housing,” Hirsh said.
That is why several Lake Forest and Lake Bluff churches jointly contribute people and dollars to sponsor houses.
Lake Bluff resident Tom Glover, a member St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Lake Forest, and his Lake Forest friends Pete Ingwersen, who belongs to Faith Lutheran Church in Lake Forest, and Guy Wilbor, a member of 1st Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, looked like old pros in their well-stocked tool aprons as they worked on the frame of a house next to the Moore lot. Glover pointed out that the project was the third house their churches had sponsored.
“But we’re still learning,” Ingwersen said. They expect to be learning even more because they plan to return whenever they can.
Why? “I think there’s a need for adequate housing for people who don’t have much,” Wilbor said.
Donovan came over, pointing out that she could use more people in the skilled and willing-to-learn categories. But she also would like people who consider themselves as all thumbs.
“There is a place for everyone in Habitat. A lot of the work is on the construction sites, but there are a lot of opportunities for people who don’t want to do construction. We need people to work behind the scenes on committees,” Donovan said. She offered fundraising, office work, family selection and working with families during the process as examples.
Selection is based on need coupled with the ability to make a monthly, interest-free mortgage payment of about $350 and a willingness to work on the project as a volunteer. Priority is given to people living in substandard or overcrowded housing conditions, according to Donovan.
“This is not Appalachia, but people are paying a lot for places that are not good for families,” she said.
At what is currently labeled the Target house, Arias put down his hammer and looked at what soon would be his own two-story, three-bedroom, frame house.
“This is our dream. We have been waiting for this, our own home, for years. Looks like it will come true,” he said.
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To volunteer or obtain more information, call Julie Donovan at 847-623-1020.
