Nonprofit to build 30 homes in 5 days

For the last four years, Edgar Ruano and his wife, Carolina Morales, have slept on the pullout sofa bed in the living room of their one-bedroom Bellflower apartment. They reserved their only bedroom for their two children.

But today they will begin building a three-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath home in San Pedro through Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy Carter Work Project.

“Finally, we will have a place of our own and for our children to have a shot at the future,” said Ruano, a 38-year-old mattress factory worker.

The family’s mortgage, plus taxes and insurance, will be about $700 -- about the same as their rent now.

“It has been very hard to share a one-bedroom apartment for the four of us, but when I went to look for houses to buy and I saw the prices, it was ridiculous,” said Ruano, who emigrated from El Salvador in 1989.

His family is one of dozens that will have new homes by Friday. The Jimmy Carter Work Project, which aims to build houses in a different city each year, will build 30 town houses and rehabilitate 70 more in the San Pedro and South Los Angeles areas in five days.

Los Angeles was selected because of its acute shortage of affordable housing, said Jonathan Reckford, chief executive of Habitat International.

It’s “as tough a place as anywhere in the United States for a family of low to moderate income to find decent, affordable housing,” he said.

According to Habitat International, 1.6 billion people need affordable housing worldwide, including 6 million in the United States. In Los Angeles County, about a quarter of all families of four earn $20,000 to $40,000 a year. In a market where the median home price is about $535,000, that income level puts owning a home out of reach.

“As the costs have gone up in our market, more and more people are renting,” said Erin Rank, president of Habitat for Humanity Greater Los Angeles. “So the families who are earning lower-than-average incomes are forced to live in one-bedroom or illegally converted units. They are having to make decisions between paying for food or medical costs or paying for housing.”

On hand to help build the houses will be a few dozen celebrities, including Patricia Arquette, Garth Brooks, Ricky Martin, Barry Pepper and Trisha Yearwood, according to event organizers.

Former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, attended a kickoff celebration Sunday at the Port of Los Angeles.

Habitat families will pay $150,000 for their town houses, with 30 years to pay off their interest-free mortgages to the nonprofit organization. Each of the families is required to invest 500 hours of “sweat equity” over two to three months in the planning and building of their homes.

Habitat selected San Pedro and South Los Angeles because of their urban settings. The organization has traditionally focused on building single-family homes but is now also looking to construct more duplexes and triplexes because of the scarcity of land in urban areas.

The units in Los Angeles will be the first in the Jimmy Carter Work Project to implement “green building elements,” such as solar panels, energy-saving windows and drought-resistant landscaping.

The 16-unit San Pedro development in the 300 block of North Palos Verdes Street, which will be called Harborside Terrace, will have a view of the harbor. The 14 South Los Angeles town houses, on Vermont Avenue at 112th Street, will be called Vermont Village and include a playground.

Ruano, who applied for the Habitat housing at the suggestion of his supervisor at work, said he still can’t believe his good fortune.

“I thought the chances were more against me than for me,” he said. “Knowing that I put a lot of effort into the building process of the house, it makes me proud. I will know what it takes to build a house. It is a dream.”

lorenza.munoz@latimes.com