Building Homes for Veterans
Nearly 50 Mercury Insurance employees, friends and family members volunteered their time and sweat equity in September to help Homes4Families, formerly known as Habitat for Humanity San Fernando/ Santa Clarita Valleys, complete a neighborhood for veterans in Santa Clarita. This is the sixth build in the 78-home all-veteran community in which Mercury has participated during 2017.
“The best part of our three-year partnership with Habitat for Humanity is it gave us the opportunity to have employees build homes and hear first-hand from veterans about their experiences – it just drives the message home. The impact they have on us is greater than the impact we have on them,” said Liz Romero, Mercury’s senior employee relations specialist. “Volunteering for the Santa Clarita neighborhood has taught me how beautiful people are when they work together for a common good. We can accomplish so much together.”
More than 100 volunteers from Mercury contributed to projects for the Veteran Enriched Neighborhood over the course of the past year, including building fencing, painting, landscaping, pipe installation and carpentry.
Marlon Tolentino, an honorably discharged Army Infantry Drill Instructor who served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan said, “Prior to this experience, we had planned to buy a home within the next five to ten years. This made it possible sooner. I’m looking forward to creating memories with my family in our new home. I was deployed for many years of my children’s lives defending our country and now I have a stable place to watch them grow up.”
All homes include two-car garages, washer and dryer hookups, tankless water heaters and solar panels. The homes in the Santa Clarita neighborhood are also prepared for veterans with PTSD, complete with LED lighting and color schemes to minimize triggers for PTSD.
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