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Costa Mesa : White-Collar Crew Turns in a Good Day’s Labor

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It was high noon and the sun beat down on the backs of the workers pulling weeds from the front yard of the aging, stucco apartment building that acts as a temporary residence for some of Orange County’s homeless.

Although most of the laborers looked as if they were more accustomed to wearing business suits and working in air-conditioned offices, they all attacked their work with gusto.

Most days, they don’t repair houses, they sell them. But for the 42 Realtors, bankers and others affiliated with the Newport Harbor-Costa Mesa Board of Realtors, spending all day Wednesday renovating the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa was an ideal way to return something to the community that keeps them employed.

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“We called in our membership and asked them to participate in this project,” said Roger Barclay, the Newport Beach Realtor who organized the renovation project. Each year Realtors take on a similar project as their way of observing Private Property Week. Last year, the board landscaped a Costa Mesa children’s day-care center.

Not limiting their efforts simply to landscaping, the men and women who turned out Wednesday were also busy painting both the inside and outside of the building that for the last year and a half has been home to some of the county’s less fortunate.

At present, about 60 people are staying at the shelter. For about a half-dozen families with children, it is the first stop on the road back from poverty. They are permitted to live at the shelter for 60 days, using the breathing space it provides to find work and save enough money to rent apartments, said Scott Mather, the shelter’s director.

In addition to the Realtors, others got in on the act Wednesday. Several firms donated paint, lumber and other building materials for the job, while a few days earlier, a pair of local insect extermination firms sent crews to the shelter to treat its walls and foundation for termites. The value of the goods and services totaled more than $30,000, Barclay said.

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