Maryland Delegates Join Habitat for Humanity Pride Build on Wheaton Renovation Project

Maryland state delegates grabbed tape measures, hammers and other tools Friday as they joined Montgomery County Habitat for Humanity volunteers for the latest Pride Build efforts to rehabilitate a Wheaton house for a young family now living in a moldy and bug-infested apartment in Silver Spring.

The house — on Elby Street in Wheaton — is the 18th county property to be gutted and renovated through Habitat's "neighborhood revitalization" program (but the first Pride Build in the mid-Atlantic region), which focuses on vacant, distressed properties that have been subject to foreclosure.

"It's a good cause in an area that needs it," said Del. Shane Robinson, D-39, who volunteered for "Delegate Building Day" at the request of Del. Bonnie Cullison, D-19, who organized it. "Any redevelopment we can do is preferable to new building and more sprawl."

"It's so important for us to give back to our community," said Cullison. The $60,000 to renovate the Elby Street house is being raised by Pride Build, a part of Habitat for Humanity that involves the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community in Habitat's housing rehabilitation work. So far, about $45,000 has been raised.

"It demonstrates how integral the LGBT community is to the larger community," Cullison said.

Mike Meller, who chairs a Pride Build steering committee and was also at work on the Wheaton house, agreed that, "Too often, it seems the LGBT community is seen as being separate and isolated from the larger community. Well, we're not."

Most of the 18 vacant, foreclosed properties that Habitat for Humanity has renovated in the county have been in Wheaton, said Amanda Fein, Habitat's manager of individual and corporate gifts. In addition to rebuilding and renovating the houses, Habitat volunteers bring them up to code and make them energy efficient before they are sold back to their new owners at affordable — typically below-market — prices.

"It's a great way to bring the community together to help folks in need of decent housing," said John Paukstis, executive director for Habitat for Humanity - Montgomery County, who was also at the Wheaton site.

In the case of the Elby Street property, a family with two young children now living in poor conditions will pay off a 30-year, no-interest mortgage at below-market cost, said Fein. Substandard living conditions are one of the criteria that residents must meet in order to qualify to buy a home through Habitat.