Community Outlook 2021: Habitat for Humanity looking forward to 2021 after tough year

Feb. 22, 2021 | Dennis Hackett
dhackett@thereminder.com

GREATER SPRINGFIELD – While the COVID-19 pandemic set the Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity back in terms of funding and its projects, they are looking forward to the virus subsiding and a better 2021.

Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Aimee Giroux said their organization assists low-income families by providing them a path to homeownership.

“We assist low-income families with home ownership or home repair, so basically through new construction or rehabilitation of other properties, we help low-income families move into a home. They obtain a mortgage through us at a zero or very low interest rate which allows them to own the house,” she said.

In addition to building homes, Giroux said Habitat for Humanity also helps with repairs in other homes.

“We also assist people who are in owner-occupied properties that may need to have repairs made, so we help them with repairs through no interest micro loans. A lot of the repair work we do is focused on seniors who are trying to stay in their homes,” she said.

Some of the repairs include plumbing, electrical, or modifications to bathtubs or other parts of the house for easier accessibility.

Giroux said the two biggest ways the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Habitat for Humanity is by limiting fundraising events and the number of volunteers on site.

“With the pandemic we couldn’t do a lot of our events, and we fundraise for everything we do so it’s influenced our ability to fund projects. Because so much of what we do is with volunteers and not wanting to put our staff in a situation that might be unhealthy for them, we’ve had to cut back on the number of volunteers we could use,” she said.

In year’s past Giroux said as many 20 volunteers would help on a project on a given day, but that number is down to one or two per day.

Because of limitations in 2020, Giroux said they are about six months behind on their current projects.

“We’re probably about six months behind schedule on the projects we were working on, which means the families that were waiting on these houses are six months behind. It’s been difficult to try to maintain productivity and safety for our staff, the volunteers, and the homeowners,” she said.

While resources are limited, Giroux said there has been an increase in demand for both repairs and new homes.

“We’ve seen a definite increase in requests for repairs, I think because people have been forced to stay in their houses. Unfortunately, for us we can only do so many projects at once so we’re looking to try to be creative with some things, but we’ve definitely seen an increase in both,” she said.

Despite a down year, Giroux said they finished one project, with two others currently underway.

“We’ve got a new project we’re hoping to put the hole in the ground for on Bay Street [in Springfield] real soon. We did finish one house in July and we still have two projects, one that we’re hoping to be done with by the end of this month,” she said.

With the weather warming up and a vaccine on the way, Giroux said she is looking forward to getting back to work and getting her volunteers back on site.

“We’re looking forward to being able to get our volunteers back out on site, and to be able to offer groups as it warms up, it makes it a little bit easier because we have more outdoor work so we can have more people out there. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to reschedule the things we had to cancel,” she said.

Along with bringing volunteers back into the fold, Giroux said she wants to resume Habitat for Humanity’s partnership with the schools.

“We’re also hoping the schools will be able to get back in play. We had a great partnership with Putnam [Vocational Technical Academy], and they would send their students out to volunteer with us so we are hoping we’ll be able to reengage those things as programs get back in place, because we miss having the kids out there,” she said.

Anyone interested in supporting the Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity can make purchases or donate supplies to their ReSTORE location on 301 E. Main St. in Westfield.

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