Tijuana

San Diego-area Habitat for Humanity officials said Thursday that they will try to repair about 200 substandard dwellings in two of Tijuana’s poorest colonias in an effort to end the deaths of a growing number of children who have succumbed to the cold this winter.

The deaths began in December, when temperatures in Tijuana and the San Diego area dropped dramatically.

Most of the deaths were attributed to substandard housing. Many poor families in the wind-swept Matamoros and San Antonio colonias, where the group will repair homes, live in houses built from cardboard, plywood and other inadequate materials.

The houses, most of them without heat and other amenities, offer inadequate protection from the cold and wind.

On Thursday, an employee of the Tijuana coroner’s office estimated that 15 children have died from the cold so far this winter.

Habitat spokesman Jim Lantry said the group will begin its work with a $10,000 cash donation made by local Home Depot officials. The company operates several building and hardware warehouses in the county. The group will try to raise an additional $50,000 for the project, Lantry said.

A volunteer crew from Tijuana has already begun the repair work. Habitat officials hope to recruit at least 100 volunteers from San Diego to work in Tijuana over the weekend. Lantry estimated that repairs will cost no more than $500 per house and will take about six weeks to complete.

“We’ll repair as many as we can. The need will exceed what we will be able to do, but we will try to do more than 200 homes,” Lantry said.

The group’s goal is to eventually build decent housing for all residents of the two colonias. Hartley called the group’s efforts now a stopgap measure.

“In some cases, all we’re doing is keeping the cold and wind out of the houses with caulking. It’s something to keep the cold and wind off the children, so they can make it through the winter. This is not an answer, only a partial solution,” he said.