Hands On Housing

Hands on Housing is the largest volunteer home repair effort in Austin. We repair and revitalize homes for homeowners that cannot afford to do needed repairs and enable them to remain in their own homes. 

**NEWS FLASH**
A Glimmer of Hope Foundation has issued AAIM a $7,500 Challenge Grant -- Raise $7,500 in pledges and donations by the end of 2009 and they will MATCH it!  Please visit our $7,500 Challenge page to learn more.

Our Programs
We have two main repair events per year -- Raise the Roof! (fall) and the Bluebonnet Spring Blitz.  Each event typically works on 25-35 homes and engages upwards of 1,000 volunteers. Our volunteer base is comprised of diverse faith groups, organizations, college students and businesses.

We also repair homes year-round with our Handy Helpers program.  Handy Helpers are skilled volunteers that tackle smaller ongoing repairs throughout the year. 

Our Clients
Our typical Hands on Housing client is over 70 years old, living on less than $10,000 per year in a home she owns and loves but cannot maintain. The clients are often approached to sell their homes but they do not want to leave the home they love and have lived in for often well over 20 years. The volunteer repair efforts enable them to remain in their homes in safety and dignity.

If you are interested in forming a volunteer group or sponsoring our efforts, contact Kathy Weiner Hands on Housing Coordinator.

Hands on Housing is dedicated to providing essential volunteer-based home repair services to the marginalized in our society - the elderly, the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled. While making such repairs, Hands on Housing volunteers help build relationships across social and geographic boundaries.

How? Volunteers from Austin's varied and extensive faith community donate time, labor, materials and money to help their neighbors in need. The additional support of other volunteers from area businesses, schools and the City of Austin make this truly a community-wide effort.

Hands On Housing volunteers help address Austin's affordable housing crisis by working to preserve the existing stock of affordable housing. In addition, they often help elderly homeowners who desire to remain in their homes instead of being forced to abandon due to unsafe conditions. Since 1990, Hands On Housing volunteers have repaired over 1000 homes.

The Need:

• About 97,000 people within Austin live in substandard homes that lack such basic things as adequate kitchen and bathroom facilities.
• Increases in living costs, including higher taxes, are forcing many lower income homeowners to choose between maintenance costs and paying bills.
• Most of HOH's recipients are elderly, disabled homeowners on a fixed income of less than $10,000 per year or are low income working families whose income falls below the poverty guidelines.
• In HOH's targeted neighborhoods, US Census Tracts indicate that approximately 60% of the housing units were built before 1970, as compared to 33% countywide.
• The increasing lack of affordable housing forces many low-income residents to flee to extreme outlying areas where housing costs have yet to reach such prohibitive heights. Those without private transportation find such relocation impossible due to the lack of adequate mass transit.
• The Center for Public Policy Priorities has estimated that in order to afford to live in the Austin/San Marcos MSA, a family of two parents and two children needs a household income of $44,044 to cover basic expenses, a figure more than double the federal guideline. And yet, of the 193,287 families in Travis County, 11,526 of them make less than $10,000.

How it Works:

Volunteers usually work as teams of 10-20 people per house. Teams select a home from the Hands on Housing file of applicants based on their team's skills, resources and time availability. A match is made when a homeowner and a team agree upon what repairs will be made. After this agreement is reached, volunteers repair the home usually during one of the two Hands on Housing intensive home repair 'weekends' each year. Although most teams provide the needed materials and supplies, Hands on Housing helps others find supplemental funding, donated materials, and skilled labor to complete their project.