Habitat for Humanity helps East Palo Alto homeowners.
Effort aims to fight displacement trend in East Palo Alto
The wooden china cabinet in Lorene Austin’s East Palo Alto living room was empty and covered in dust. Her record player and television were pushed to the corner. The white wicker chair was left in the middle of an otherwise bare living room.
With most of her furniture removed and home decorations tucked away in boxes, the cracks and holes caused by termites in her wooden floors were now visible.
Austin, 80, moved into her home in 1962. After a nearly 30-year career as a nursing assistant in Palo Alto and raising a daughter on her own after her husband died of a heart attack in 1970, she’s rarely had the time or money to tackle the many renovations her home needs, she said. On Thursday, she got some help. The floors in Austin’s home and decaying wooden fence in her backyard were among five revitalization projects undertaken in East Palo Alto by Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco as part of the organization’s Building Blocks program, which is designed to keep residents in their homes by taking on repairs.
“I’m really appreciative of them doing that, because otherwise I can’t afford it,” Austin said. “I have no money. I don’t get much Social Security — that’s my only income.”
Outside was a crew of Habitat for Humanity volunteers and staffers carrying Austin’s brand-new fence to her backyard. They would demolish her decaying fence and dig new postholes. The posts would then be set overnight in concrete
before the crew returns Friday to start framing the fence, said Ron Sera, a construction supervisor with Habitat for Humanity.
By Saturday, volunteers will be nailing the boards in place. Next week, they will start replacing Austin’s old floors with wood laminate.
“It looks like we are moving right along,” Sera said as the last pieces of the old fence were removed.
Austin remembers hosting barbecues in the backyard and spending hours planting hydrangeas and geraniums. Her knees are too weak for her to work in the garden now, but all her past efforts are visible — bushes of pink hydrangeas line the sides of her home.
Under its Building Blocks program, Habitat for Humanity focuses revitalization efforts on one block in a neighborhood for three days, said Maureen Sedonaen, CEO of the group’s local chapter.
Habitat crews worked on three other homes Thursday in Austin’s neighborhood. Another home, now vacant, is being renovated so a family can move in.
“East Palo Alto is a very family-connected and generational-connected community,” Sedonaen said. “It’s also historically been very targeted toward displacement, especially in the last five years because of the housing crisis.”
Not far from Austin’s home was Jean Lu, a Habitat volunteer. She stood outside a cream-colored home posing for a photo with her 17-yearold son as a Habitat crew scraped off the old paint in preparation for applying a new coat of gray.
Lu has helped with Habitat several times over the past four years as part of a volunteering partnership with the company she works for, Asian Real Estate Association for America. On Thursday her son, Justin, came along for the first time.
“I just want him to get a feel for what it’s like to help out in the community and be grateful for what we have,” Lu said.
Plus, she said, he’s going to college soon, and this was one more chance for some motherson bonding.
“I just want him to get a feel for what it’s like to help out in the community and be grateful for what we have.” Jean Lu, volunteer who worked alongside her teenage son