On the east end of the street is the Rose of Sharon Spiritual Church; the Holy Raiders Revival Church is just a couple of blocks away. Both look more like garages than anything designed for ecclesiastical purposes. Around the corner, at Wilcox and Karlov, a car stops in the middle of the intersection; a loitering man saunters up, hands over a small brown paper bag to the driver, and riffles through the wad of small bills he’s handed in return in a leisurely manner. On the parkway in front of a row of two-flats, broken glass glitters in the cold autumnal sunlight like cut diamonds popping out of the barren soil. Hardly a car on the street looks less than ten years old; most have a smashed window, a bashed fender, rust metastasizing from the bottom up. Trunk lock reinforcers are de rigueur. A white face is conspicuous.
Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 by Millard Fuller, an Alabama fundamentalist Christian and former businessman and lawyer. Eight years earlier he had achieved his goal of becoming a millionaire (he was 30) and decided to chuck it all–sold all that he had and gave the money to the poor. After building houses in Zaire with his wife and four children for several years, Fuller started Habitat for Humanity, an international organization with the motto, “A decent house in a decent community for God’s people in need.” In Chicago, that translates primarily to rehabbing two- and three-flats, with a leavening of new construction on vacant lots. Fuller’s vision is being realized, but slowly.
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In the case of the Westside Project Council, most of the money and labor comes from white, middle-class churches and their members, although other volunteers are welcome. On this bright but chilly October Saturday there are about two dozen of them, all white, most of them from the two sponsoring churches, Saint Paul’s United Church of Christ in Lincoln Park and First Congregational Church of Western Springs. Saint Paul’s runs a car pool every Saturday; those from Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest have driven in. A regular work shift is 9 AM to 2 PM on a Saturday, which means, says Anne Dickerson, an attorney from Saint Paul’s dressed in sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers, and dangling earrings, “that even though we’ve been working on this for about 15 weeks, there’s really only about two weeks’ worth of work finished.”
Each of the “co-adopting” churches on this project has committed itself to raising from $15,000 to $18,000 and to bringing out at least five volunteers a week. The total cost of the project, including the original purchase of the derelict property, is expected to be about $60,000; when completed, it will have two three-bedroom flats and one one-bedroom in the basement. Begun June 4, and worked on every weekend but the Fourth of July and Labor Day holidays, the building is scheduled for completion by Christmas. The units will be sold to families that have been carefully vetted.
Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord,
“Our focus is not on numbers. It’s not quantity, it’s quality. We’re affecting people’s lives here. There’s millions of dollars in government money spent on housing every year, but nothing is done to affect people’s lives. Nothing is done to change the way they see themselves and their futures. Having ownership makes a difference. When people are restricted to a renter’s mentality for years and years, they don’t realize they have to put effort into upkeep.
Cindy Lewis, an accountant, is in charge of rustling up volunteers for Saint Paul’s. She is young, petite, and energetic; she wears her chestnut-brown hair in curling bangs and a ponytail. She is dressed in layers for warmth, with a yellow turtleneck under a sweatshirt under a soiled red quilted vest. She wears jeans and sneakers and a yellow bandanna tied at her neck; a Walkman peeks out from beneath the vest. She got involved in Habitat “when we had a series of forums at Saint Paul’s to look at the issues in the city, and how Christians could confront them, I wanted to get involved in something hands-on rather than just form a committee.
