Home Is Where Habitat Is : Christian Group to Deliver First 53 Residences for Working Poor

BUENA PARK —  For all of her young life, 5-year-old Jeanette Rosales and her parents have lived in a garage attached to a rickety trailer. The hodgepodge home stands amid a jumble of broken-down houses and cars in a poor Latino enclave in Buena Park, just a short distance from Knott’s Berry Farm.

Elias Rosales, Jeanette’s father, fears for his daughter to venture outside because of nearby drug dealers. So she plays in the cramped space between the garage and trailer that is protected by a high wooden fence. Recently the family received a notice from city officials warning that the use of trailers for permanent housing violates the law.

But the Rosaleses won’t have to worry much longer about possible eviction or the discomforts of living in substandard housing. They are among scores of families that, in August, will move into 53 homes being built in Rancho Santa Margarita, Anaheim and Santa Ana under the sponsorship of Habitat for Humanity.

An international Christian organization that counts former President Jimmy Carter among its members, Habitat for Humanity is preparing to deliver its first batch of low-cost housing since it began operating in Orange County three years ago.

In a region where real estate prices are so high that it is difficult for many hard-working families to even find rental homes they can afford, the group is using volunteer labor and donations of land and building materials to create houses that low-income families can buy.

“It is just like a dream,” said Elias Rosales, 26, who will get a two-bedroom condominium in Rancho Santa Margarita, a new community in South County with greenbelts, parks and a safe environment in which to raise his daughter. Already, his wife, Maria, has enrolled Jeanette in a kindergarten class there that will begin this fall.

Two Habitat-sponsored homes are nearing completion in Anaheim, three in Sana Ana and 48 in Rancho Santa Margarita.

In the year since former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, headlined a groundbreaking ceremony for the homes in Rancho Santa Margarita, the project has moved ahead despite delays in getting grading plans approved and an recession that brought most other housing construction in the county to a grinding halt.

Nonetheless, a long list of contractors and suppliers in the county did what they could to defray home-building costs and “there has never been a shortage of volunteers,” said David Reed, who gave up his own contracting business to become project manager for Habitat for Humanity in Orange County.

While churches have been a major supplier of volunteers, Reed said groups of lawyers, bankers and students have also shown up on Saturdays to lend a hand at all three building sites.

This week a 25-person work team from Habitat for Humanity International, based in Americus, Ga., will arrive in the county. They will camp at O’Neill Regional Park and join 25 local volunteers to help construction crews at Rancho Santa Margarita.

The national organization is sponsoring 15 such traveling work groups this summer to build 1,500 homes in 225 communities in the United States and Canada to commemorate Habitat’s 15 years of operation. During that time, Habitat has built more than 10,000 homes worldwide for the working poor.

In Orange County, numerous building companies have responded to Habitat’s call for help.

The Fieldstone Co., a Newport Beach home builder, and the Santa Margarita Co., developer of Rancho Santa Margarita, donated land valued at about $1.4 million for the 48 condominiums. Fieldstone also provided an interest-free construction loan and a supervisor to coordinate the construction at Rancho Santa Margarita.

Dave Langlois, senior vice president for Fieldstone, estimates that suppliers and subcontractors working on the Rancho Santa Margarita project--fittingly called Carino Vista, or Caring View--on the average are providing a 25% discount for materials and services, worth about $600,000.

Similarly, contractors and suppliers are assisting the townhouse projects in Anaheim and Santa Ana. Among the most generous is Home Depot, which donated 85% of the lumber in Anaheim and 50% of the lumber in Santa Ana.

Craig Mock, owner of an Anaheim concrete contracting company that is installing the foundations and sidewalks at Carino Vista, said his suppliers provided substantial discounts and 30 of his own employees each donated a day of free labor.

Mock said he is very sensitive to the need for lower-cost housing.

“I am in the business of building homes and probably 70% of the people in Orange County can’t afford what I build,” he said. Those who buy the houses built by Habitat, Mock said, are “getting a great deal. It is an offer of a lifetime.”

What they are getting in Rancho Santa Margarita is a chance to buy a home for about $50,000 that would have cost $95,000 to build without donated labor, materials and land and could sell for as much as $125,000 on the open market. The average home price in Orange County is about $245,000.

Buyers are being required to make a down payment of about $500 and monthly payments of between $475 and $525, including property taxes and homeowner association fees. For most, it’s less than many of them now pay for rent. No interest is being charged on the mortgage.

Similar terms are being made available to home buyers in Anaheim, where the land is provided by the city’s Housing Authority. In Santa Ana, the project is being built in partnership with the Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp.

Habitat for Humanity is relying on the community to provide funds to cover the construction costs. Churches and other organizations are being asked to “adopt” a house by paying $37,000 to cover costs remaining after donations from the building industry and volunteer labor. So far, seven Habitat homes in Orange County have been “adopted.”

The plan is to have construction costs paid upfront by charitable contributions so the monthly payments made by home buyers during the next 20 years can be invested in future Habitat projects. Orange County’s Habitat branch already has an agreement with the city of Brea to develop about 36 more affordable units there starting early next year.

Home buyers in the program aren’t getting a free ride, Habitat officials stress. Habitat will enforce restrictions on resales of the homes that are intended to prevent buyers from reaping windfall profits.

All home buyers are also required to invest 600 to 1,000 hours of “sweat equity,” time that is spent helping Habitat build houses or raise funds.

Selecting families to become Habitat home buyers wasn’t easy, officials say. The demand for the low-cost houses far outstripped the supply.

“For most of them, the need was clear. The hardest decision was to rule out the people who couldn’t afford it,” said Stacy Thacker, who chaired the selection committee that sorted through 600 applications for the 48 Habitat condominiums in Rancho Santa Margarita.

Thacker, a 23-year-old volunteer from Irvine, said those selected included teachers’ aides, waiters and waitresses, factory workers and chefs’ assistants. Their annual family incomes ranged between $10,000 and $29,000.

She said many applicants have been sharing living quarters with other families, with the result that as many as 13 people were squeezed into two- and three-bedroom apartments.

Susan McCollum said she, her husband and their three small daughters had barely been able to afford a $635-per-month, one-bedroom apartment on her husband’s earnings as a banquet waiter at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point.

“We have been living from paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “We haven’t gone out for dinner in a year and haven’t had a vacation since we have been married.”

After the McCollums applied for the Habitat program, they anxiously awaited the decision of the selection committee.

“We prayed every day and that is all we talked about. It was a way out for us,” McCollum said, adding that she will “never forget” the date--Nov. 13, 1990--when the family learned it had been chosen for a two-bedroom condominium in Rancho Santa Margarita.

Selection for the Habitat program was even more thrilling for Joe Samano, 37, who last summer was forced to send his wife and five children to live in Mexico because the low-cost condominium they had been renting was sold, and he couldn’t find other housing large enough for the family that he could afford.

“I miss my family very much,” said Samano, who stayed behind to work as a welder at a patio furniture manufacturing company in Irvine during the day and at night as a bag boy at a Mission Viejo grocery store.

Samano said his family knows he applied for the Habitat program, but he doesn’t plan to tell them they were selected to buy a three-bedroom condominium until they come for a visit next month.

“I want to surprise them,” he said.

Each Saturday since construction began, prospective home buyers at Rancho Santa Margarita have been showing up at the building site as early as 6 a.m., ready to pitch in.

A few know what they are doing. For instance, Rosales, who is a professional painter, said he is getting a kick out of painting what will be his own condominium complex.

But most are learning the building trade from scratch. “It is incredible how many nails there are in a house,” said Paul De La Hoya, who is helping build his family’s townhouse in Anaheim.

Daniel Darrow, owner of a framing contracting company in Costa Mesa that is working on the Habitat projects, said teaching unskilled labor how to frame wasn’t easy.

“You could go a lot faster without the volunteers. It slows down the process,” he said. “But it is important so the people have a feeling that they contributed.”

Frequently when the day’s work is done, parents at the Santa Margarita project bring their children from a day-care center manned by volunteers at a nearby church to see the latest progress.

Hector Ramirez, 35, said his three children are eager to move to Santa Margarita from Santa Ana’s Delhi barrio.

“Every Sunday they want to come to see the house,” he said with a smile.

At the day-care center, children in the Habitat program are making new friends, while their parents at the building site are meeting soon-to-be neighbors.

“Right now,” Ramirez said, “we are like a big family, and we will try very hard to stay that way.”