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Realtors pick up hammers to mend homes in need of repair
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Published: April 24, 2009
In Charlotte's Villa Heights community, volunteers will reshingle a roof that lets in rain for kitchen pots to catch in the living room.
They'll patch a porch roof and hang new gutters on a house owned by a 90-year-old Statesville woman who grows food in her garden to give to people who are hungry.
On Durham Lane, north of uptown, they'll spread four cubic yards of gravel so the owner won't have to park in mud.
Those three houses are among 33 in Mecklenburg and Iredell counties that hundreds of Realtors have volunteered to repair today.
With the Charlotte region's housing market in the doldrums, the agents will turn off their Blackberries and pick up hammers and saws to nail on new roofs, replace porch floors, build handicap ramps, tack up new gutters, slather on new paint and mend broken-down fences.
They're calling their event Realtors Care Day.
"Hopefully by the end of (today), we will have repaired 33 homes and changed the lives of those living in them," said Joe Rempson, a Realtor with Charlotte's T.R. Lawing Realty Inc., who came up with the idea for the Housing Opportunity Foundation, the charitable arm of the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association.
Since 2003, the foundation had given away a house each year, but wanted to make more of an impact.
Through their church, Rempson and wife Rachel have escorted high school students to other cities on mission work to repair homes. He saw how their work changed lives.
He thought the concept might work for the foundation -- only this time with his fellow Realtors.
"I thought if we had a hundred to volunteer and were able to repair five to 10 houses, we could call it a success and build on it," he said.
More than 700 stepped up.
That means each of the 33 houses will have 20 to 30 volunteers, supervised by licensed home contractors who are also volunteering. Much of the supplies and paint have been donated by building suppliers.
The foundation has raised $30,000 for the repairs. Rempson expects it will take up to $40,000 to complete all the repairs.
The houses were identified by city and nonprofit housing organizations such local Habitat for Humanity chapters.
John Paul Soto is one of the volunteers who jumped in early.
Soto is a Charlotte firefighter who sells real estate during his off time for Exit Realty South. The project, he said, packs a statement "that Realtors are not just about selling and buying real estate.
"This project is all about helping the communities where we live and work."
Soto will lead a team of 30 Realtors at a house on Barlowe Road in west Charlotte. The house needs all or part of the roof replaced, a dead tree removed and the yard cleaned up and landscaped.
The owner is a single mother of two sons. After bills and the mortgage, she can't afford the upkeep.
"She seems like a person really trying to make it work," Soto said. "We just want to help make her home feel like a nice place to come back to."
Stephanie Gossett, a broker for Lake Norman Realty, is helping too. She liked the scope of the project: It's not so focused on Charlotte. The homes are scattered around the two counties.
Gossett, broker-in-charge of the Mooresville office, is leading a team of 24 volunteers from the company's four offices at a house in Statesville.
They'll replace siding, and extend downspouts to move water away from the house. They'll also replace rotting wood from a chimney.
"Our projects in the past have been so Charlotte-centric," she said. "This is a very deliberate effort on the part of the foundation to make a bigger statement: That we are all going through tough times, but that we really care about our communities.
"It's an opportunity to spread our reach."
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