Volunteer City, USA...#2 Anway

A recent article proclaims portland to be the second-most generous city in the country, when it comes to volunteer hours. I'm proud to see this kind of action in my community.

http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=132874365097508600

Hour 15 - ACE Mentoring: Building Exteriors & Cost Estimating

First things first, SORRY NO PICTURES TODAY. I forgot my camera tonight, but I promise future blogs to be packed with even more exciting photography than usual. And if you are lucky, there will more of me shoveling.

For tonight's ACE session we met at one of the architect mentor's office in the Old Town part of Portland. Craig walked us around the corner to take a look at a job his company had designed. The 3 story building was under construction but will one day serve as soup kitchen for the homeless, with residential units in the upper levels. He talked to the students about all that stuff architects do. When we got back to the office, two of the engineer mentors (Hobbie & Kenny), talked about cost estimating. We then did a rough estimate of what elements the cafe's budget could handle. At one point we ran over budget and had to go with some less expensive furniture for the customer seating. At the end of this weeks meeting, the architects led an intial design on what the exterior of the coffee shop will look like. It was interesting to see certain students gravitate towards this kind of achitectual related design and others show more interest in the cost estimating, which is more engineering/construction related. They were given pizza (again) and the homework of cutting out photos of interior themes that they wanted to see in their cafe.

Hour 9 - Habitat for Humanity on NE Morgan

How's my form?

An early Saturday wake up call and I was on my way up to north east Portland to help Habitat for Humanity with the construction of a multi-family house. In Portland, HFH projects are not easy to get on, especially on the weekends. Today there were 8 volunteers and 2 HFH employees who were managing the project. Thomas, of HFH, first explained to us how the organization operates. They purchase properties and when the value of the property has risen to a certain value they will build energy efficient, multi-family homes. I was suprised to learn that they actualy sell the homes, at cost, to those in need ('those making ~1/3 of the median income'). They also provide interest free mortgages to the buyers. Additonaly they require 500 hours of service in the year of purchase from the buyers - this amounts to helping every Saturday for one year. I think this kind of 'sweat equity' would lend to an added sense of ownership for the benefactors. The house we were working has 2 floors. One floor has four bedrooms and would house a family of 9, and the other would be home to a mother and her 4 boys.

With inroductions out of the way, we got to work. Jeanna and I raised our hands to fill in a utility trench along the back of the house. I happy for the for a chance to get the blood moving in the chill of the morning. My new friend, Jeanne, turned out to be a fellow civil engineering, quasi-Spanish speaking, rock climbing, SE Portland resident - a tight niche. With brain and braun we filled in and compacted that trench as only 2 engineers can. Afterwards we got on to painting the exterior of the house. In good fortune, we had blue skies and sunny skies to work outdoors in. Other volunteers spent the afternoon painting interior doors and door frames. Today was more work than I'm used to on a Saturday, but it was great to be out in the sun, helping the affordable housing cause along side some new friends. If there are any readers out there, they will be seeing more of Habitat for Humanity in future blog entries.

Jeanne, and company, knockin out some trim