welcome everyone to the self living where we love to talk about beauty in the home function and the twenty first century and of course connect you to all local resources today we are talking to a nonprofit organization habitat for humanity and we have with us today mike terrell who is the construction coordinator for habitat m b a dot org so michael tell us who's habitat what is habitats mission well first thanks for having me habitat for humanity is pretty popular organization it's an international organization that operates all over the globe  but it also operates nationally in many different countries and within each nation habitat operates through an affiliate system each affiliate operates independently following the guidelines in the by laws of habitat national so the mission for habitat overall is to provide decent safe affordable housing across the globe and to advocate for policies for decent safe affordable housing across the so how did you get involved with habitat and i know you're a local you live in west windsor i live in east windsor and we both met during our very first construction build which was a number of years ago two thousand and nine two thousand and nine when we started right so yeah what got you involved with habitat well i was familiar with it through you know television and other organizations and i've always been i was always interested in working with my hands in doing things like that looking for an opportunity to give something back and looking for the right kind of charity that sort of appealed to my senses i stuff i came upon habitat i started looking for local affiliates i found the local affiliates got in touch with a couple of different ones and it just so happened that a project was going on at the time and the volunteer coordinator contacted me and said if you'd like to come show up on saturday started and and to be honest the the appeal to me of habitat is that it's giving right back i you know what i'm doing is going right to the family because we work with the family and we hand the keys over to the family so that kind of appeals to me  more so than giving money even though you know you do that and you do that for other reasons in other places this one really really drives me because i get to see the the end result  millstone basin area can you tell me about what catchment area does that service short as i mentioned every affiliate operates in every affiliate operates independently and each one has its own area of service office our service area includes east windsor and west windsor hightstown cranberry plainsboro and robbinsville that's the area that we've sort of incorporated in and that's the area that the national habitat recognises us is covering and there's not necessarily affiliates in every area but have had is so widespread there are many many affiliates and they all operate a little bit independently a little bit differently  d it's important for us to know i'm a board member for habitat m b a you're a board member that none of us get paid that every every affiliate works differently but our affiliate is all volunteer that's right and that's important for people to know yeah our entire board is all volunteer and obviously all the labor that we recruit and that we use is all volunteer on here many many affiliates have one or two full time employee penny that we collect goes directly to the bill of the house and goes directly to the families and we'll talk about family selection in a minute but the first thing i want to start with is you know have a tad millstone base and started in east windsor and if we can start with the noose the first slide i'd like to show you that we did build a number of homes in robbinsville and in east windsor so that is where we all started and i i believe i wasn't involved back then but i believe it goes back to one nine hundred ninety three one thousand nine hundred five so habitat m b a has been in the works for quite a long time and has serviced over nine families  just in east windsor that's right and yes they they we started in one thousand nine hundred three these these houses are all fairly closely located to each other it's it's a block over in east windsor and  once we started building in that area we you know cover quest to build more week found additional families that need places to go and frankly the neighbors in the area started doing work on their own homes right so it became a little bit of a revitalization project it does and and now nowadays those homes are kept up very well we've been back to visit a couple of times and we've seen them there are some other properties in the area we may get involved with in the future but  know those were the first nine homes and then the tenth home that we worked on which was the one we showed the one we talked about earlier in two thousand and nine was over in moore in the hightstown area on south academy street so let's look at the next slide so we can see oh very first home in hightstown new jersey and this is a habitat home it is a three bedroom home and part of habitat is that every home that we build has to have a front porch and the reason for that is because it exemplifies community and it just really fits in beautifully in hightstown with all of the old victorian homes to keep that front porch but this is the house that you and i got involved in and for me emotionally i would go out and volunteer every saturday as well as you did many saturdays working on this project and i know for me i would leave there on a saturday feeling just so good about what how i had spent my time and that positive to vittie in my you know it just stayed with me all week especially when you work with family especially when you work with the family and the family has to get involved they have to have sweat equity yeah do you want to talk about that well sure we ask each family to partner family homeowner to give three hundred fifty hours of their time working with us on the home and typically you think of that is building and you know putting up putting up two by fours and putting up she rocking all but really again that every up every affiliate up affiliate operates a little differently so you can you can flex a little bit on that if they have day jobs of both parents have day jobs they can't come while we're building they can do other things like maybe attend a finance course and learn how to do home finances or they can come in and  lunches on a saturday we give them every opportunity to contribute but many times they have to be invested in the building that yes many times they do spend time and they enjoy it you get to meet a lot of the people the people love the people are coming volunteer love meeting the homeowners and working with them and a lot of times homeowners continue to work with us on other projects right right so let's take a look at the next slide because what happened with building that first home in hightstown is that it started an entire revitalization plan right and so this this beautiful home here is not stunning i especially like the windows and the shed has on the front porch and there's your front porch exactly but this was actually standing not too long ago in higher town on south academy street yeah yes south account street had is is a block in hightstown across the street is the hightstown housing authority apartments but on this side there's a couple of families that have been living there for many years and they're still there but there were several empty lots and several what we would call blighted homes so working with the hightstown government we were able to obtain a couple of the lots the two thousand and nine project project number ten was the first one and these these homes were on a lot down the block that led us to develop sort of a plan for the entire block because working hightstown right now let's take a look at the other slice you can get another perspective of what we were dealing with before and of course these homes came down and this was such a danger to the entire block because our children who will going in  there and hanging out and they were not safe they were not safe homes and yet it was they were there for many many many years so they came down and if we can take a look at the other lot this is the proposed four homes two duplexes right that we are looking to build can we see the other slide please and there it is this is our projection for south academy street we are looking to build two duplexes and  so this is the author artist's rendering of those duplexes and ultimately will serve four families we have both foundations built an we are currently working on one of the duplexes as you'll see in some of the coming slides and again when i see the renovation of the homes you can see there's a front porch on the one side and then there's a front porch on the sides so even though it's a duplex they have privacy yeah the architect really did a good job in designing these the layout so that even though they are duplex there's just the one common wall otherwise they have privacy and it's not represented here but they have nice back yards too so yes there is a beautiful exactly arc for tonight space so the next slide if we can take a look will will show us a little bit about where we're building do you want to tell us about that  from lots of things are accessible they're really minutes away from any major any shopping so it accommodates families very well but that red zone is the entire building zone and it starts at the at the far end with the first house that we've built there's another house on the corner which in fact that house was recently knocked down and rebuilt as well yeah not by any of these and they rebuilt that home because they saw the contrary so the construction going on yeah and so it does help the whole block it helps everyone else to say yes i need to take care of my property as well because the whole community is rising right right and for so for lucky we'll get to the end of the other end of the block in the coming years and ultimately it could be you know six seven eight or nine families that we serve just on that one block oh yeah and they could support each other isn't that what happened on east windsor when we built the nine homes they had their own community and they learned to support each other and that's amazing to see that happen and so we hope that happens as well on south that because they pulled together they want to keep the neighborhood looking nice even take care of the homes and they help and they all have each they all have the same issues you know how to manage their finances and continue to grow in their families so it's important so let's do what is the next life can we take a look at the next life so again here is a lot there god know there are god now that's a lot that we're building on and let's take a look at the other slides you can see so that's one of the foundations and there's off front porch they are your front porch and in our construction trailer in the back and there's no basements in these homes now they're built on  on the come from anywhere and everywhere one great thing about habitat of volunteering for habitat is no specific skill or skill set is required we put word out that we're working we invite people to come and work with us i'm sure we'll talk about corporate groups in a minute or two but we invite people to come they come out we set out the work plan for the day we ask people if they have any specialties or skills or preferences in some cases people don't want to go up on ladders of they don't want to handle power tools so we find all of that out and we assign jobs to people accordingly so we don't force anybody to do anything they're not comfortable with but there's always work to do on the site there's lots and lots of different things that people can do so  anybody that shows up i guarantee we can keep it because we get to keep them busy we can and of course michael being board members you can see that there is a lot of work to be done behind the scenes we are still looking for some positions on the board yes we are always looking for a youth coordinator we're looking for a secretary and of course we're always looking for someone to bring and supply lunches for our volunteers so there's lots of ways if they're just but organizations a be tons of ways on the construction side it's pretty straightforward but there's even a couple of different things there i mean you can certainly come and swing a hammer you can come and make lunches one day a lot is a lot of time youth groups will do that but besides that i'm constantly trying to groom construction supervisors because someone has to be on site to supervise the work for the day we also bring a site manager on site and the site manager is there to help the construction supervisor make sure paperwork gets done make sure people are operating safely make sure people are well fed and have water to drink and things like that as a set of eyes to really just over a second person you have come first if god forbid somebody needed to take a break or set aside that person could take them aside get them in the shade hole and down but nevertheless that's on the construction site on the on the volunteer side on the more what i would say is the administrative side as you said we're constantly looking for people to help out with the board we'd love to get a board secretary but there's tons and tons and tons of ways you can help out even if you just want to do a little bit there's we have a marketing committee we have an events committee those committees are formed with lots and lots of people on them they're led by other people but you can come and help work on one a vent you can help leave in the event you can just help out on an event you can help out with some of the marketing or some of the social media you can there's a lot of other committees as well that you can you can work on to we have grant writing we can always  coordination we have we can always use people to help with those kinds of things you can talk about the numbers if i ask can always use a little help here and there and then we have family selection family selection which route which is involved because they do have to qualify and one of the things we like to say is this is not a handout it's a hand up and that's why we call our families partners we call home owners and their partners with us in that they have to be able to support a home so let's let's put up the other slide for homeowner selection and let's talk about homeowner selection here's another great so here it is so homeowners selection tell us about how do we pick a home and how does habitat this habitat give the home away how does that  well a family has to apply for homely which you can do through the website it's a very simple process to get started but they do have to qualify they have to show that they do have the need for a home they do have to meet certain requirements sometimes the homes are started before you have a family sometimes you have the family before you start the home so if you have if you start the home first you want to have a family that's appropriate to the size of the home and these are three bedrooms in this case there are three bedroom home so you want to family with with at least fo members of the family has to have has to show their financed ability financial stability over a period of time so they work with our family selection committee to do that and show that they can support the home payment going forward now  we end up mortgaging the home to the family for what it costs us to build a home so the family really only has to qualify for the type of mortgage that we are going to give you have habitat and be a holes the mortgage yes they don't have to go to a bank correct point for them to understand zero interest mortgage zero range it's it's seventy years for over thirty years and it's a significantly reduced mortgage so they get a great deal out of it but they have to be able to support a home have to be able to so anybody in new jersey can apply and they can apply through the website occasionally we do bursts of information out to tell people that we're looking for family so so we are looking for families right now it's and waiting for how we can take up before we can take up to four families and the first house may be completed by the end of this year the elderly you know right yes so where we're you know if things go along a smoothly as we plan we are looking for a family that can have a home by the end of this year and the so we can we talk a little bit about what kind of salary they need to have in order to qualify i know it's hard to see it on this but i know if it's a family let's say if it's a family of five they can make less than forty five thousand but no more than fifty five thousand and that's a range that we we sort of you know estimate using using various pieces of information from various state websites where we think there will be able to afford the type of mortgage that we can give them right so that's a target and they have to qualify with this salary in order to get the low income tax property correct so if we if we were to give it to a family that was over that they they wouldn't qualify for the tax break correct which would then make the house more expensive for them as well right in the long right in the long run and they can't turn around and sell this house no they have to they have to live in the house  mortgage is secured and they have to live in the house a minimum of ten years they can just flip the house just for market value so yes but because they are buy the house for a lot less than rocket value which kind of goes back to the community atmosphere we want them to want to live in the community really want them to have some ownership there and some feel some some level of connection to that community right right and so tell me again you know where the the web site how easy is it for someone to go in there and apply for a home i know we have a landing page in spanish so that helps a lot and we do have a wonderful family homeowner selection person who will be a whole committee scenario and the application comes right up and you can get in there is the as you mentioned a spanish landing page will come up in spanish and spanish and we have some spanish speaking people on the committee who can help interface with the family if there's not an english speaking person in the family but they can get on online click on apply for a home and get the process started to the first application priest part of the application is pretty straightforward and likewise if you want to volunteer there's a link for volunteering around here and a link for donating as well it's all at the top of the home page and it's pretty easy to find yeah and again thanks to our volunteers we have a corporation some free corp who is helping us with our marketing and has updated our website since none of us as i said nobody gets paid we need volunteers to even help us an update our website maybe write a blog for us so we are looking for many volunteers and we are very grateful for those organizations corporations that get involved with habitat to really get the word out and to bring us up to the twenty first century with our own social media and website designing so it's really easy for us to for someone to go to our website and really get to know who we are right here in hightstown so let's talk about our you know going back to the community and habitat we are whole holding different events we just held a big event on november third called home harvest for habitat and let's talk about you know what was that day like and did we raise a lot of money michael  did we raised a lot and we sort of started that event a little bit late and ran it in a very short time period so what we did last year was very impressive we had the event in november at the end of november or at the beginning of november and it was the first time we had done that as you mentioned sofie is a is a local comfort company that's kind of taken us under their wing they've all offered us a lot of time and a lot of people and they a lot of their staff helped coordinate and organize that  event the event was basically a dinner and dancing kind of event we held we hold it at the cranberry and who also was very kind to work with us on that offense and a lot of people went into planning at the event was the the tickets ticket sales for the event itself it included a silent auction a couple of other fund raising raffle type things within the event itself it went off very well but it was a ton of work required people to handle all in ticket sales people to handle the silent auction all by itself because that was that was a huge don't even collect the baskets collect the look at the materials then get the set up get make the thing go off and then have all the things ready that snow did for the event slideshows and speeches and things like that so very instrumental in helping us with that and the good news is we're going to do it again we are going to do it again and besides raising a lot of money for this build we had a great time yeah it was a fun event and so you know what i like to tell a interiors as we have fun doing it so it's not you know even just helping build we have fun on the bill side all year and there's a lot of really good emotion that happens when you get involved with habitat and right now we are planning another event we're planning other question i have is is there donations do we do we take furniture donation i know we get a lot of phone calls for that right and what kind of donations do we take we always take cash we take cash and checks a good money through grants or you have to apply and qualify for a grant and that hit or miss sometimes but as far as material donations we sometimes get though needs donations from some of our suppliers and vendors some of them will donate  partial materials a plumber may donate some of the materials for the plumbing because we do have to have some certified professionals for and some of the the permit items actual materials building materials furniture excess tiles things like  that we as an affiliate can only use some of it because we have limited storage space and has to be something we can use on a current build so we're very selective in what we take but some other habitat ciliates have what they call re stores which is basically a happy well i would have to say hands down it's going to be my kitchen the kitchen and i you cook i'm a cook i like cooking i enjoy cooking and i was lucky enough to be able to remodel the kitchen on in years ago so i it's kind of in my wife's family as well many of our events center around a meal because we come together and usually around a meal i enjoy providing the the meal enjoy doing some special things for for the family bringing them together getting a little we're not out of them to you know enjoy themselves and be comfortable in my home and it helps bring people together so i guess that's kind of the way i was brought up and that's why i think that's probably the kitchen is the heart of the home you know and so with that i said you love michael you're the best  thing you've done so much work for habitat and habitat and died for you just come and visit us and of course we'll see michael there on that as a construction coordinator and of course you'll see me there as well as one of the board members involved come out help build and we'll see you there at self living thank you thanks for ha