Building more than houses: a thank you letter

My first experience with Habitat for Humanity at Duke highlighted two very important characteristics about you, the population of Duke students (these are generalizations, so please do not take offense if you are one of the, say, five people who do not fit into these stereotypes).

First, you can write legislation, speak a zillion different languages, shoot a basketball, perform Shakespeare, help cure diseases, start NGOs and design skyscrapers, all while taking a full course load. But you cannot use a hammer. Second, for some unknown reason, you still try.

Every weekend you try. You head out, often in your own vehicles, carpooling and routinely making multiple trips between home-sites and campus. Even though Habitat, a volunteer organization that depends on transportation, has no formal bus or shuttle service, you find ways to get to Durham every weekend—fall, winter and spring—to build.

I don’t know why you do it, either. In the preposterously annoying North Carolina drizzle and the absurdly high humidity and AT 8:30 A.M. ON A SATURDAY, you come to build. Despite the fact that you could be sleeping or watching basketball or catching up on homework or a million other profitable enterprises, you still come to volunteer your time and labor, and you build.

Do you understand the gravity of what you are doing? Let me begin with the obvious: You are building a shelter. Considered one of the four necessities of life (along with air, water and food), shelter protects us from the elements. But you are also building a home, a place of safety, respite and love. Studies show that children growing up in a home, as opposed to an unstable living arrangement, perform better in school, have fewer behavioral problems and have a lower chance of being impoverished and unemployed later in life.

You are building a catalyst that will lead to a stronger, more productive community. Homeowners are more likely to actively participate in their neighborhoods through civic and political volunteering. Not surprisingly, they are more likely to vote, more likely to know their representative officials and more likely to address community problems. Their local economies benefit from increased tax revenues and consumer spending at local businesses. You may not realize it, but what you have started by waving that hammer is systemic improvement.

You are building relationships with your fellow Duke volunteers, and perhaps more importantly, with our neighbors in Durham. You may also be building a few forearm and wrist flexors, especially since you usually have to hammer every nail three times over to get it right (at least at the start of the morning).

You may not know it, but you are building change, and this is especially important in Durham. The Research Triangle area has the highest per-capita income in the state and the highest concentration of Ph.D.’s in the country. It also encloses the state’s most expensive rental market and the region’s lowest home-ownership rate. Many working families can only afford to live in substandard, unsafe or overcrowded rentals. It takes $50,000 to sponsor a Habitat House (sponsor, not pay for—Habitat homes are sold, not given away). Thanks to a generous partnership with Duke’s Office of Durham and Regional Affairs, which matches $25,000 raised by students, we have begun building one Duke house each year. This would not be possible without your support throughout the year.