Third World Living Conditions Afflict Many Rural Areas of U.S. : Agencies Hammer In Hope Amid Poverty

Tom Carew is an ambassador in the hollows and hills around here. His credentials are a hammer and nails. His assignment: Wipe out Third World living conditions in central Appalachia.

It seems a daunting task in this corner of eastern Kentucky where dirt floors, tar-paper roofs and rickety outhouses aren’t Dust Bowl memories, but modern-day realities. For some folks, heat in winter is a luxury and hot showers a convenience beyond their modest dreams.

“They’re on the fringe,” said Carew, director of Frontier Housing Inc., a nonprofit agency for low-income people. “It’s Third World living.

“When you’re living in a cold, lousy, dangerous house, how happy can you be?” he added. “You’ve got to put up with your basic survival every day.”

Carew’s agency is one of hundreds across rural America that are building homes and bringing hope to people whose homes often are little more than shacks insulated with rotting cardboard and illuminated by bare bulbs.

Since 1974, Frontier Housing has built 165 houses and rehabilitated 75 others in four farming and lumbering counties where 23% to 39% of the people live in poverty.

It’s just a start, considering that in parts of this region one of every four or five houses is substandard, Carew said. “If we’re building 20 houses a year, it’s going to take a long time.”

Still, there have been plenty of successes.

There is Ethel Ward, 64, who lives in this tiny community with her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in a neat three-bedroom house that Frontier built last year.

They have only to look in their back yard to see how far they have come. There sits what is left of their old frame house--two dark rooms with a roof that is caving in, roaches, rats, one electrical circuit and no plumbing.

“We didn’t have enough room to turn around in. I was afraid the house was going to burn,” she said, “ . . . but what could I do about it? I wasn’t drawing much income. My boy (a sawmill employee) wasn’t working much.”

Her daughter-in-law, Maggie Davis, said there was no privacy because the rooms had no doors. There was no place for her 14-year-old girl to study and no way to keep the house dry or clean because of the leaks. Insects would crawl on them at night.

“When you don’t have any hot water, it’s kind of hard to do anything,” added Davis, who suffers from high blood pressure. “You felt like your child wasn’t clean enough. . . . She never did bring no one home, (she felt) they’d go off and say something.”

Gayle and Billy Williams, who live in a converted smokehouse about 30 miles away in Midland, also will see a change in their surroundings this summer, as Frontier remodels their house and adds a bathroom.

It will be Gayle Williams’ first indoor toilet. She is 61.

“We’ve managed it OK, but now we’re getting older,” she said.

Smile and Survive

Carew said that many people in substandard housing rationalize their plight. “If you start telling yourself there’s a better way to live, you do yourself in,” he explained. “It’s a means of survival.”

Helen Barker knew that life had more to offer, but it always seemed beyond her grasp.

Frontier built a house for her, her husband, Danny, a seasonal truck driver, and their five children. For 10 years they had lived in rented apartments, some with broken pipes and some without toilets.

“After you have moved around so much, the stability of a home means so much,” she said. “It takes so much worry off your mind. Seeing it built, it’s like a dream come true . . . knowing it’s going to be mine. It tickles me to death!”

The Barkers and many other families Frontier helps receive mortgages through the Farmers Home Administration. The Barkers struggle to pay $150 a month in rent. Their monthly mortgage payment will be about $100 and Frontier, which receives state and federal funds, will cover a third of the payments for up to five years.

For months, Danny Barker would stop by each night to check on the progress of the house and report back to his wife. A few weeks ago they moved into their new home, set on a hill among sturdy Kentucky oaks.

Helen Barker said she has many plans, but added: “I’ll probably sit around with a smile on my face for the first two months.”