By: Dr. Bill

 

On the downhill slope of his presidential term, John “Copycat” Milich summoned the usual suspects to order.  He paid tribute to the R.I. President Barry Rassin, a.k.a. “The Lama of Bahama,” and urged us to inspire someone.  Greeter Karen McNamara led us in the Flag Salute and invoked Lincoln to tell us, “Whatever you are, be the best.” Gary Sloan, whose name is curiously not Don, Mike or Hermann, led us in a passable patriotic song.  Karen told us that she had worked in city government for 37 years.  Now she volunteers at the Library, leading an ESL group, and just completed a temporary stint for Hayward’s Park Department.  This year she plans to attend the Rotary International in Hamburg and then travel through Southern Europe, including Croatia.  John Milich and Mike Heller, our speaker, proceeded to tell her all the places she needed to visit between Zagreb and Split.  Fun Fact: One of the principal dairy producers in Croatia is Milich Milk Company!  There were no visiting Rotarians so our shame was not made public.

After handling procedural questions, President Milich recognized Ana Dominguez for a birthday.  When he tried to recognize Barry Toby for Cindy’s big day, our own Perry Mason demanded documentary proof that she had in fact had a birthday and refused to pay.  Dennis Harvey shared with us a one-page prompt sheet titled “Rotary at a Glance.”  There were no pictures on it.

 

 

President John introduced our speaker Mike Heller.  He spent a career working for Cisco Systems and for the last 14 years has worked as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.  He spoke to us about the work of the organization here in the East Bay and Silicon Valley.  In the last 30 years they have built 500 homes locally. Currently they are completing a development in Martinez. In the works they have housing in Walnut Creek, Livermore, Pittsburg, Oakland, Bay Point and Fremont.

 

What Heller believes is the secret to HH’s success is the process which brings owner and home together.  People who qualify must be employed and with limited income.  90% of the labor cost of that home will come from volunteers, and the prospective owners must supply 500 hours of that work; thus the new owner has “sweat equity” in the project.  The construction process is broken into thousands of individual tasks; volunteers, of whom about a third are women, are trained in appropriate tasks and provided with tools.

 

Once the house is complete, the new owner has a 25 or 30-year mortgage to pay at 0% interest.  Once the transfer is made, the house cannot be sold again, thus discouraging flippers.  If the owners must sell the house before the mortgage is paid, they will receive what they have paid into it, and Habitat will make it available to another family.  The organization has a success rate of over 90%.

 

There is considerable corporate support for Habitat in the Bay Area from tech firms like Facebook and Cisco.  The biggest challenge is finding suitable land on which to build.  The group is just finishing 30 new condos in Fremont and plans a project on a derelict auto yard in Oakland.  An upcoming project at Pleasant Hill BART will provide 42 townhouses with the added challenge of preserving native oak trees.  It takes about a year to complete a house and, with volunteer labor, cost about half the price of a comparable structure.

 

Two innovative projects in this region are the renovation of subpar housing for veterans.  Habitat is also working with the City of San Jose to construct small sleeping cabins for one or two people on city land to help address the homeless problem.

 

Part of the support for Habitat comes from its four Restore outlets in the Bay Area which collect and sell building material.  Mike Heller described them as “a combination of Home Depot and Goodwill.”  The nearest store for us is at 1500 Monument Boulevard in Concord. You can get more information on volunteer efforts at Habitatebsv.org.  A great talk about a worthwhile organization!

 

The raffle was held and Gobind Anand won the Greeter’s gift, once she had turned her ticket right side up.  Mike Thelen won the chance to go in the bag and, to the genuine sorrow of all, drew blue