1st Roof-a-Thon tops 24 homes in the city, more to come
Seventeen years after buying her home in Brookline, Jessica Nguyen finally has the new roof she needed.
When she and her husband bought the house, they tried to meet smaller needs first. Then they divorced and she couldn’t afford it. The roof wasn’t going to hold out much longer, but it would have to. Work that was slated to begin earlier this year screeched to a halt because of the new coronavirus.
At the start of July, crews from Spanbauer Construction arrived and, last week, they finished $30,000 worth of repairs to Ms. Nguyen’s 100-year-old home. The work was part of a debut program — Roof-a-Thon, an initiative of the URA’s Housing Opportunity Fund with support from the Wells Fargo Foundation.
Four contractors are providing new roofs and other repairs to 24 owner-occupied homes throughout the city, including Sheraden, Hazelwood, Oakland, various North Side neighborhoods, the Hill District, Beltzhoover, Homewood and East Hills. To qualify, homeowners must make 50 percent of the area median income — $29,050 for one person, $41,500 for a family of four.
Ms. Nguyen, 41, is the mother of a 13year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. She is studying for a Realtor’s license and works for a pharmacy delivering prescriptions to customers who can’t or are afraid to pick them up because of COVID-19. She previously worked as a disability manager for an insurance company.
With workmen on her roof and one painting the railing along the steps up to her porch, she stood on her newly painted porch, still sticky underfoot, and praised the crew and the process.
“It has been a godsend,” she said, noting that the crew was also able to repair soffit and fascia on her loan budget. An exterior soffit is located beneath the rafter tails and fascia is the horizontal band at the end of the rafters.
“I filled out the application and sent in all the paperwork a year and a half ago,” she said. “They sent a contractor out and he gave me the list of what he thought
needed to be done and they put the paperwork through in January or February.
“I knew there were programs out there,” Ms. Nguyen said. “People think that if you have a steady income you don’t qualify for programs, but a lot of people do. I have two kids and it’s hard.”
She was one of many applicants who needed new roofs. The Roof-a-Thon resulted from a flood of applications, many for roof replacements.
“Back in February 2019, there were so many applicants needing repairs and replacements that URA staff started discussions on how to get as many roofs done at once and as quickly as possible,” said Jessica Smith Perry, director of housing initiatives for the
Urban Redevelopment Authority.
She said the URA would like to have a Roof-a-Thon in the second quarter of every year. The cost of the program is $733,028 — $125,000 from Wells Fargo and $608,028 from the URA’s Housing Opportunity Fund. By last week, 12 homes had been finished.
The URA’s contractors are McMeekin Contracting, Spanbauer Construction, Concrete Rose Construction and Low Country Building Solutions. The latter two are minority/women-owned businesses.
The Housing Assistance Program is a wing of the Housing Opportunity Fund, which was created in 2015-16 in response to concerns about the loss of, and need for, affordable housing. It has its own advisory board of city residents and the URA acts as the governing board.
According to the URA, the program helps households at or below 80% AMI to get up to $30,000 in home repairs. Households at or below 50% AMI can qualify for a grant plus a deferred loan. They don’t need to make payments while they live in the house. When they sell the house, a repayment is calculated based on appraised value. For households between 51% and 80% AMI, a portion of the loan is amortized and the rest is deferred.
The city is committing $10 million each of the next 12 years toward affordable housing initiatives. Information: www.ura.org.