Nailing It Down : Habitat for Humanity Volunteers Learn by Building a House

They’ve been hammering away for four days, those 100 volunteers working at a lot next to the Century Freeway south of Los Angeles.

Most of them are rank amateurs who knew nothing about concrete forms or vinyl siding or plumber’s tape a week ago.

And most had certainly never set foot before in Willowbrook, where today they will finish constructing a new home for the Villegas family.

The building blitz by the Habitat for Humanity organization is a rehearsal for a plan next year to erect 32 houses for poor families in nearby Watts. About 2,000 volunteers--including former President Jimmy Carter--will help in that weeklong project.

Workers and neighbors alike are learning from this week’s run-through.

“This is an amazing place,” said novice carpenter Paul Smith of the Westside. “A guy smashes his finger with a hammer and all you hear is a ‘gosh’ or maybe a ‘darn it.’ ”

Next door, the Howze family has hung a banner across the front of their residence welcoming the Villegas family and thanking Habitat for Humanity “for improving our community.” Neighbors along Alabama Street are so impressed by what’s going on that some are making plans to join in during next year’s project.

Habitat for Humanity’s house-building seems to have that effect on people.

Since the program began 18 years ago, volunteers have built more than 25,000 homes. Scrounging donated materials and land when possible, they construct the homes for about $50,000 each. Then they sell them at no profit and with zero-interest loans to low-income families who are willing to help with the construction.

That translates into $270 monthly payments for Juan and Teresa Villegas and their three children, who now live in a cramped South Gate apartment.

“This is not a giveaway,” said volunteer Albert Cusati, a laid-off aerospace worker from Echo Park. He was taking a break from roofing work and gulping ice water Thursday afternoon to cool off.

“The Villegases are a hard-working family who came here looking for a dream,” Cusati said. “For them this is better than winning the lottery. This is beyond their joy.”

Inside the partially built home, paint-spattered Teresa Villegas--whose husband is a VCR repairman--admired her new surroundings. The family will get the keys at 1 p.m. Saturday. “Everything about this house is going to be special,” she said.

The three-bedroom, 1,050-square-foot home is a prototype for those to be constructed next June 19-23 on Santa Ana Boulevard between Alameda Street and Mona Boulevard, according to project manager Mary Hagerty.

Officials hope that the speed with which this one has been built can be duplicated, too.

The framing went up Monday. Roofing, insulation and drywalling was done Tuesday. Siding was put up Wednesday. Painting was done and fixtures installed Thursday. And landscaping and detail work will be finished today, said worker Laura Lelteau, a medical student from the Westside.

Volunteers such as Randall Harris--who has built nine houses--show the novices how to nail together roof joists and hang Sheetrock.

“This is an unusually well-built place,” said Harris, a 79-year-old former school administrator from San Luis Obispo. “The windows fit perfectly when it came time to put them in. You don’t see that very often. I was absolutely amazed.”

Paul Smith, a retired advertising executive from the Westside, was being coached by volunteer Ron Brunner of South-Central Los Angeles on vinyl-siding installation. “If it’s in the groove, it should fit,” Brunner said. “Yep, you’ve got it. Pop it in. Now the nail.”

Smith said he had never built anything more complicated than a doghouse until this week. But now he hopes to encourage fellow members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills to help build a house.

“In one week this has gone from a lot to a home that’s going to have rosebushes outside and a family inside,” he marveled.

Other volunteers promised that they would return when Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, lead next year’s 32-home project.

“You find all religions and cultural backgrounds here. Los Angeles needs that,” said Tom Power, a South Pasadena teacher who postponed a vacation to Hawaii--and paid a $75 airline ticket penalty in the process--to work this week.

Debra Rosenbaum, a Santa Monica architecture student, said: “I’d thought that being a woman, things might be difficult. But this ended up a great experience.”

Melanie Lee of Marina del Rey agreed. She vowed to return in June with an all-woman house-building crew she hopes to organize through the National Assn. of Women in Construction. “I was on the drywall crew that did that room,” she said proudly, pointing toward a front bedroom.

“That first wall being pulled up was like the barn-raising scene out of the movie ‘Witness,’ ” said lawyer Jonathan Pollack of Santa Monica. “Doing something for someone other than yourself puts a lot of things in perspective.”

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The project drew admiring looks from neighbors. “We need more of these houses here,” said Edward Jackson, who lives two houses away and is thinking about volunteering next year.

So is Sherice Norris. She is a rap singer who performs under the name Blaze and lives next door to the construction site in a duplex owned by her uncle, Chester Howze.

“This has been a real pleasant experience in every way,” she said.