Today we spent the day working with Rebuilding Together Baton Rouge. Like many affordable housing projects they have a long long list of applicants wishing to gain assistance from the organization, but unlike many other organizations they do not provide housing. They provide housing repair assistance. Individuals and families with low income who's housing is considered to be in the low affordable housing range often need help with certain parts of their houses over time and that is when rebuilding together gets involved. They will help redo parts of a house allowing them to help a large number of home owners keep up there houses so that they are able to continue to live comfortably in them.
When we woke up this morning we preparing to have some breakfast before heading over to the site when we were surprised by eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and fresh biscuits made by our host at St. James Church. Once our stomached were more than full we headed to the site to voluntwer with Revuilding together.
Ms. Ethel Hardy has lived in her house for 29 year. She is a very nice woman, but her exterior walls had all of the paint flaking off causing the wood beneath to be exposed to moisture and at risk of rotting. Therefore, we spent our day scape the siding and repainted the siding. It was a hot day with lots of water, ladders, and paint. After we finished though the difference was very noticeable as is clear in the before and after photos of the front (the sides were even worse to start).
It was great to be able to see a home owner in the morning and after we had finished working she was so excited for the improvement both for the aesthetics and protection the coat provided.
After volunteering we headed back to our hosts where we washed off all the paint and had our weekly family meeting to go over things. We watched a cool Bike and Build video that we will be showing to a lot of our hosts from here on out so I decided to include a similar one for you to watch (this one isn't on YouTube yet). Here is the 2013 version: http://youtu.be/6jFAKQaZ4_k
After that we ran to a local outdoor recreation shop where B&B alumn Rueben was able to help hook us up with a 25% discount on some much needed supplies. It is always great to have alumni who are willing to help and donate their time as he did last night and again tonight once he got off work. He helped to better fit a number of riders to their bikes so they'd be more efficient and comfortable on their rides. We then explored our neighborhood of Baton Rouge for a few hours before calling it a night.