Housing: Orange County’s builders conceived HomeAid as a way to help the homeless and polish their public image.

The two men in tailored suits arrived about 15 minutes apart--one in a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz, the other in one of BMW’s more luxurious models.

As they got out of their cars, they were watched by a group of men in T-shirts lounging in the shade of a tree across the street. Down the block, several teens adjusting a car stereo made the air vibrate with booming bass notes.

The contrast was stark: Two obviously well-to-do businessmen in fancy cars do not blend inconspicuously into this low-income neighborhood at the base of the foothills in Orange.

But that contrast is what Bob Albertson and Bart Hansen came to talk about--the divide between Orange County’s haves and have-nots, and a growing effort by people in their industry to help cure the problem of homelessness.

They are home builders--Hansen is a principal of Shawntana Development in Newport Beach, and Albertson is president of Presley of Southern California, also in Newport Beach--and as such are well aware that their industry is well-equipped to address homelessness by building shelter.

For two years now, they and hundreds of others in the county’s building industry have been doing just that. All have collectively been contributing thousands of hours of time, talent and labor and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of materials to refurbish and enlarge existing shelters, and, in several cases, to build new ones for Orange County’s homeless.

The work is done through a Building Industry Assn. of Orange County program called HomeAid, and it has been done without much fanfare--ironic because the program was begun in part to help persuade the public that builders are not concerned solely with profits.

Albertson, HomeAid’s chairman, and Hansen, its vice chairman, acknowledge that the original motivation for HomeAid was not wholly altruistic. But they say publicity is the last thing they and others in the program are interested in these days.

“I’m doing this because my company believes there is a real need that the company can meet,” Albertson said. “We are in this because of the positive aspects, because we can give something back to the community where we make our living.”

To date, more than 600 builders, developers, planners, designers, architects, subcontractors, material and equipment suppliers and others in the building industry locally have committed more than $1.6 million in cash and in-kind donations of labor and material to the program.

The HomeAid program is the largest single private effort on behalf of the homeless in the county, and it will produce more new beds for homeless shelters in Orange County this year than all other programs combined, said Allen Baldwin, director of the Orange County Community Housing Coalition.

“A lot of shelters have had beds added through other programs, but certainly HomeAid has been extremely significant, especially in a year that wasn’t a very good one for the building industry,” said Susan Oakson, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

In its first year, HomeAid projects added 86 new beds to homeless shelters in the county, and the five projects scheduled for this year are expected to add 85 more.

Since the program was officially launched in June, 1989, six projects have been completed. Two more were begun last month, and two others are scheduled to begin by mid-September.

Despite a recession that has ravaged the construction industry for more than a year, HomeAid has been catching on as more and more businesses are called upon to participate, and as more and more shelter program operators add their names to the list of candidates for HomeAid assistance.

One of the first HomeAid beneficiaries was Interval House, a home in central Orange County for battered women and their children. The shelter’s capacity--which its operators keep secret for security reasons--was increased 25%.

The facility, situated in a single-family home, had been in operation for eight years “and was pretty run-down,” community outreach director Robin Jaruszewski said. The $110,000 refurbishing included gutting and replacing the entire kitchen, including all the appliances, painting inside and out, installing new carpeting, putting new plumbing in the bathrooms and adding a bedroom.

“It was just a beautiful, lovely thing they did here,” Jaruszewski said. “We had no money to do it ourselves, and the impact was just tremendous. HomeAid allowed us to increase the number of people we can serve and made this a more attractive and more healing place for the women and children who come here.”

Testimonials such as this led the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, which represents builders from Ventura County to the Mexican border, to adopt HomeAid as a regional program after others saw how well the Orange County HomeAid project has been received. BIA chapters in several counties--San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles among them--have launched their own HomeAid programs.

Albertson and Hansen are beginning to receive invitations to speak about HomeAid to other building industry groups, in California and in other states.

Hansen has also been asked by regional officials of the Federal Reserve Bank and of the department of Housing and Urban Development to discuss HomeAid at a panel discussion next month in Fort Worth.

The men talk excitedly of expanding the HomeAid idea beyond assisting existing homeless shelters. There is a place, they say, for the building industry itself to establish nonprofit operations to build and administer affordable-housing programs.

Hansen’s company is now working with BIA Southern California on plans for a single-room-occupancy residential development in Santa Ana. A so-called SRO building generally contains small, single-room, furnished apartments that rent by the week. If the financing and land planning issues can be worked out, the BIA would participate as a nonprofit partner, using its share of rental revenue to support other HomeAid programs; Shawntana would build the project as a profit-making venture.

Albertson predicts there will come a time when the industry could even begin developing and administering affordable single-family residential projects.

As successful as HomeAid appears today, it did not have an enthusiastic beginning. It began rather quietly as the brainchild of Tim Galvin, a Tustin advertising agent who now makes his living selling new homes in Chino Hills.

There was never an overt animosity toward the idea, Galvin said, but the building community was not racing to climb on the bandwagon, either.

“There was some inertia at first--and some people were concerned that there would be a backlash from people who felt all we were doing was helping bums in Santa Ana; but once people started realizing the benefits--to the industry and to the community--then they started getting excited.”

HomeAid was born after the building industry succeeded in its campaign to defeat Measure A, the so-called slow-growth initiative, on the county’s June, 1988, ballot.

Although the initiative failed to win voters’ approval, voter surveys and polls commissioned by builders during the campaign underscored in spades what most already suspected--that most people in Orange County distrust the building industry.

As Galvin boldly and bluntly put it in the November, 1988, letter that spawned HomeAid: “. . . . we are all too familiar with the common public perception of builders and developers as greedy, wealthy individuals who reap obscene profits from the sale of their homes.”

To counter that, Galvin said, the BIA chapter in Orange County should commit itself to lead the fight against homelessness in the county. Such a program, he argued, would result in builders “providing decent housing for those who need it, not just those who can afford to pay our prices.”

Galvin said his letter came after a meeting of the BIA board of directors in October, 1988, at which discussion centered on ideas for a program or project to help counter the anti-builder sentiment then growing in the county.

“About 75% of the board members said we needed to start something positive and not just react to criticisms,” Galvin recalled, “and most said we needed to put something back into the communities we work in. But nobody came up with any concrete suggestions for what to do.”

Shortly after that meeting, Galvin was talking to one of his advertising clients--Hansen, the Shawntana partner--and Hansen “told me this remarkable story of how things just snowballed when the BIA got involved in Irvine’s temporary housing program.” That involvement, which was spearheaded by Shawntana and Presley of Southern California, provided a blueprint for HomeAid, which relies on builders’ soliciting contributions from their subcontractors and suppliers.

“That story became the seed of my letter to the BIA,” said Galvin, who stressed in the letter that the program he envisioned would not be one that hounded businesses for hard-to-raise cash but that would instead seek donations of labor and material--which most small sub-contractors could come up with more readily, and willingly, than cash.

Galvin credits former BIA Executive Director John Erskine, now a lawyer (and until December of 1990, a Huntington Beach city councilman), for moving the program gram forward.

“He exhumed my letter in March of 1989 and brought it up at an executive committee meeting and really starting thumping for it.” The next month, Erskine called Michael Lennon, community relations director for the county chapter of the BIA, and Galvin, Albertson and Hansen together and asked them to prepare a proposal for a program that would be called HomeAid.

The key to the program’s success, Albertson said, has been the unqualified support it has received from the cadre of small businesses that make up the bulk of the building industry in Orange County.

The big building companies, such as Presley and Fieldstone and Mola Development, sign on as “builder captains” for a particular project, committing to complete the job, but those companies turn to the network of suppliers and subcontractors they use in their everyday business dealings to provide the necessary labor and materials.

“The subs are just great,” Albertson said. “Without the little carpet company that says ‘Hey, I’ll donate carpeting for the whole house,’ or the plumber who comes in on his own time to re-plumb the bathroom, there wouldn’t be a program.”

The premier example to date is the Don R. Roth Family Center in El Modena, where Albertson and Hansen met recently to discuss HomeAid.

A total of 112 companies, many of them one- and two-person operations, provided everything from the architectural plans and site grading to the roofing and furniture in the three large duplexes HomeAid built for families that are temporarily homeless in the El Modena area.

The single-story stucco residences are turnkey homes--completely furnished down to the pictures on the wall. They provide shelter for up to 90 days while the families organize their finances and find permanent housing.

The total value of the project--which was completed a year ago and has so far served 19 families--was $400,000. In-kind donations of labor and material accounted for $335,000 of that, and the HomeAid board kicked in $65,000 in cash from the program’s trust account.

The cash, which comes from several annual HomeAid fund-raisers and from unsolicited donations, is used to buy materials or to hire labor when a donor cannot be found, Hansen said.

Of the $1.1 million HomeAid has budgeted for five completed projects and two that have been started, so far only $250,000 has come from the program’s cash reserves--a testimony to the strength of its industry support.

That support, Hansen said, is growing, and HomeAid has even begun drawing support from companies outside the building industry. Recently, he said, Carl Karcher Enterprises asked to participate. The fast-food chain wound up being a key sponsor of the annual HomeAid Fashion Show fund-raiser this spring. And when the economy improves and the building industry starts showing signs of new life, the scope of the HomeAid program--now limited to five projects a year--should increase as well.

“That, at least, is the goal,” Albertson said. “Bart and I may not be here in 20 years, but we want this program to be around forever.”

What HomeAid Has Built

Since it began operating in 1990, the Orange County HomeAid Program has adopted 10 projects. The six in the first phase have been completed. In all, the 10 projects are valued at $1.6 million. 1. Thomas House, Garden Grove Refurbishing of an eight-unit apartment for homeless families. Operated by the Thomas House Temporary Shelter foundation. Total project value: $125,000. BIA builder captain: Fieldstone Co. of Newport Beach. In-kind contributions: $95,000. Cash donations: $30,000. 2. Interval House, central Orange County Rehabilitation and upgrading of an existing home for battered women and their children. Operated by United Way. Total project value: $110,000. Builder captain: Kaufman & Broad Inc., Orange County region. In-kind contributions: $100,000. Cash donations: $10,000. 3. New Vista Shelter, Fullerton Rebuilding of an apartment for homeless families. Operated by Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services. Total project value: $115,000. Builder captains: Bramalea California, Irvine, and Standard Pacific L.P., Costa Mesa. In-kind contributions: $100,000. Cash donations: $15,000. 4. Don R. Roth Family Center, Orange. Construction of three new duplexes for homeless families. Operated by the El Modena Service Committee. Total project value: $400,000. Builder captains: Shawntana Development, Newport Beach; Presley of Southern California, Newport Beach, and Baldwin Co., Irvine. In-kind contributions: $335,000. Cash donations: $65,000. 5. Anchor House, San Clemente. Rehabilitation of a duplex for homeless families. Operated by the Episcopal Service Alliance. Project value: $40,000.Builder captains: Lusk Co., Irvine, and Taylor Woodrow Homes, Newport Beach. In-kind contributions: $35,000. Cash donations: $5,000. 6. Anaheim Interfaith Shelter, Anaheim Refurbishing and expansion of a single-family home for homeless families. Operated by the Salvation Army. Groundbreaking scheduled for September. Project value: $80,000. Builder captain: Not yet named. 7. Huntington Youth Shelter, Huntington Beach Refurbishing of a historic farmhouse and addition of 12 new bedrooms for a facility to house homeless and runaway teens. Operated by Huntington Youth Shelter. Work began in July. Project value: $385,000. Builder captains: David Dahl Co., Newport Beach; Koll Co., Newport Beach, and Mola Development, Newport Beach. 8. Santa Ana YWCA Second Stage Housing, Santa Ana Refurbishing of a four-unit apartment for homeless women and their children. Operated by the YWCA. Project value: $55,000. Builder captain: Johnson Integra Co., Santa Ana. In-kind contributions: $30,000. Cash donations: $25,000. 9. Friendship Shelter, Laguna Beach. Refurbishing and enlarging of a detached home to provide shelter for homeless men and women. Operated by Friendship Shelter Inc. Project value: $125,000. Builder captains: Shea Homes, Walnut, and Brock Homes, Laguna Hills. In-kind contributions: $110,000. Cash donations: $15,000. 10. Precious Life Shelter, North Orange County. Expansion and rehabilitation of a home for unwed mothers and their newborn babies. Operated by Precious Life Shelter Inc. Work scheduled to begin in August. Project value: $100,000. Builder captain: Southwest Diversified, Irvine. Source: Building Industry Assn. of Orange County