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Portable Home Will House Elderly
in Need The Charlotte Observer May 07, 2003 YORK, S.C.
- In
a church parking lot in downtown York, parishioners are building a house
that puts a new twist on recycling. When
finished, the house will begin a cyclical journey. First volunteers plan
to haul it from the parking lot onto the land of a local elderly resident
whose own home has deteriorated beyond repair. The
person can live there rent free until they no longer need the home. Then
it will be fixed up and transported again to another elderly person's
land. And so on. Johnny
Wine concedes the home's travels may strike some as morbid, but they are
inspired by a mix of compassion and economy. "It's
giving someone in their last stages of life a nice place to stay,"
said Wine, 60, a retired schoolteacher and member of Trinity United
Methodist Church. "They keep it as long as they need it." Trinity
volunteers call the house an "ET," which is short for Elderly
Transportable Housing. They've erected a sign that announces "ET is
Coming." People
passing by have been slowing down to check the place out since volunteers
started construction last week, organizers said. "It's
been a conversation piece around town," said Mary Jane Shuler, 52,
co-chairwoman of the project's committee. The
ET is the church's effort to combat substandard housing for the elderly
through a program founded and run by the United Methodist Relief Center in
Mount Pleasant. Eighteen
reusable ET houses have been built in South Carolina, according to Suzanne
Jones, another former teacher who was helping the church get ready for a
Saturday fund-raiser to help pay for Trinity's house. Six more ETs are
under construction. The
relief center began renovating dilapidated houses after Hurricane Hugo
battered the Lowcountry in 1989. When
relief center workers visited poor enclaves outside Charleston to assess
the hurricane damage, they found problems beyond those caused by the
storm. Some in rural areas were living in shacks with no electricity or
plumbing. After
fixing up existing houses for years, the relief center in 1999 began the
ET program, meant to provide new homes to the needy that were durable,
accessible and, most of all, portable. The
home rising in Trinity's parking lot is built atop a mobile home frame. It
is a wooden rectangular box with cream-colored vinyl siding and a pitched
roof. Its dimensions are 12 feet by 48 feet, with one bedroom, a living
room and kitchen area and wide, handicapped-accessible doorways
throughout. By
moving the home around, volunteers make sure it helps the greatest number
of people, Wine said. When
it's complete, the home will be owned by the relief center. The center
will demolish the occupant's old house for free. A
church committee is working with the state Department of Social Services
to select a needy homeowner to move into the home. In the past, recipients
have lived in the homes for as little as days or as long as years,
organizers said. Materials
for the unit are expected to cost $21,500. The church has raised close to
$14,000 so far and secured pledges for help with services such as plumbing
and electrical wiring. Wine
and seven others, most retirees, hammered away at the house Tuesday.
Fifteen people showed up to help last Friday. Organizers first estimated
the project would take three months, but they've been surprised by the
progress they've made in less than a week. "We're way ahead of
schedule," Wine said. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
