Volunteers Lift Carpet and Spirits

Kendall Maddox, a 15-year-old freshman at St. Thomas High School, looked around in wonder at the extent of damage, and then got busy hauling warped roof tiles to the dumpster.
 
"This project is really good for the community," Maddox said. "It's going to help a lot of families."
 
Not all volunteers are local. Scott Giger, a pastor from Michigan, headed south to see how nonprofit organization LINC Houston is working in the community during the rebuilding phase of hurricane recovery.
 
"They told me to get up there on the roof," said Giger as he ripped off row upon row of rotting shingles. "I didn't know Ike was that bad."
 
According to a report recently released by the Harris County Housing Authority, it actually was "that bad."
 
Harris County has a total of more than 994,000 residential units, of which 484,000, or nearly 50 percent, experienced some type of damage.
 
Approximately 6,700 residential units are uninhabitable, and another 18,700 are "presumed to be displaced.".
 
People are still living in damaged homes, and some are getting sick.
 
"We have four volunteers tearing moldy carpet out of an elderly woman's home," Junkans said. "She's still living there and she has gone to the hospital three times for mold inhalation. Things like that pop up all the time."
 
Junkans said the goal is to repair 250 homes by the end of the year.
 
Peter Carson, community investment program manager at United Way of Greater Houston, said repairing and rebuilding the city will be a huge task.
 
"Our concern is to get as many volunteers as we can for the course of this recovery effort," Carson said. "It could be a year, two years..."
  
Saturday, January 24th was a workday blitz scheduled to tackle the next three houses on a growing list. 
 
"We're trying to see how many volunteers respond," Junkans said, "and trying to figure out what it takes to put a lot of organizations together to pull something that big off."
 
Maria Gomez gazed from her front window as her children mingled with volunteers in her east Houston home. 
 
"This is a blessing from God," Gomez said. "Thank you for remembering me."
 
If you're interested in volunteering, Call Volunteer Houston at 713-964-0299. For more information, visit www.linchouston.org or www.volunteerhouston.org.