Habitat to Go - Christianity Today

Members of 18 West Coast churches are building houses for hurricane victims and shipping them to the Gulf Coast.

Just sending money wasn’t going to cut it for the people of Community Presbyterian Church (CPC) in Danville, California. They wanted to do more.

After Hurricane Katrina hit last August, CPC missions pastor Dick Sanner headed to Mississippi to answer a distress call from a former colleague working in the devastated area.

“We wanted to do something that would have a long-term effect on the region, and so we began to focus on the idea of redevelopment,” says Sanner. First they recruited other churches in California to assist and urged members to give through World Vision. Next came the big idea.

The West Coast and Gulf Coast teams met with the city council of McComb, Mississippi. “What impressed us about McComb was that it had been the recipient of about 5,000 refugees but was up and running barely two months after the storm. We knew they knew what they were doing and would be a good partner for us,” Sanner explains. They agreed to build new houses.

The group purchased four acres of land. Then, returning to California, Sanner began telling other churches about the work. They adaped the Habitat for Humanity model, building portions of the houses in California, loading them into crates, and shipping them to Mississippi. Building in California allowed local contractors to donate money, materials, and workers, which significantly drove down costs, as well as the amount of material and human resources needed.

“We were able to mobilize hundreds of people,” Sanner said.

This cooperation between congregations birthed an organization called “Umbrella of Churches” that quickly raised $300,000 to build 16 houses. Under the plan, once finished on-site in Mississippi, the houses will be sold, with about 90 percent of the income from each house being used toward construction of another house. By March, Umbrella of Churches had built and funded 15 of the 16 house frames with Promise Keepers agreeing to fund and build the final frame.

—with info from the Enterprise Journal and cpcdanville.org.