Silver Valley Family Gets Home For Holidays
Beating even their own expectations, Habitat for Humanity volunteers have finished a second Silver Valley home this year.
“It ran really smoothly,” said Jim Dodge, an auto mechanic whose family will move into the new home in a few days. “We weren’t expecting to move in this year.”
Dodge, his wife Nila, and their three children now live in a drafty Osburn home built in the 1930s. The electric heating bill in winter is more than $200 per month.
“It’s old and mold likes to grow on the walls,” Dodge said. “We wanted a house of our own.”
On Saturday at 2 p.m., the nonprofit housing group will turn over the keys to the Dodges’ new home at Woodland Park, about two miles north of Wallace in the Burke Canyon. In May, the group dedicated its first house, in Kingston.
The homes are sorely needed in Shoshone County, where one-third of the county’s homes date back to the Great Depression. Only two Idaho counties - Oneida and Bear Lake - have older housing.
At the same time, Shoshone County housing prices are rising, driven by increasing values from the Silver Mountain ski resort. The result: low-income working families are locked into renting for years, and those rents are going up.
For families who otherwise couldn’t buy a home, Habitat organizes volunteer laborers and gathers donated or at-cost materials to build modest homes. The Dodges donated more than 500 hours of labor, and will pay off a $33,000 interest-free mortgage over the next 20 years. The $250-per-month payments will help fund future homes for others.
Donations and labor are easier to get now that the three-year-old chapter has built two homes, said chapter secretary Judy Blalack.
“People can see where their donation is going,” she said.
More than 100 churches, organizations and businesses donated cash or materials for this home, she said. Hundreds of people volunteered their labor, including drywall workers, plumbers and electricians.
Carpeting, flooring, roofing, lumber and electrical parts were all donated. The site was donated by MKM Homes, Inc. The Target department store in Coeur d’Alene donated all the interior paint - plus brushes and 10 volunteer painters. Even Enaville’s Snakepit restaurant and Coeur d’Alene’s Rustler’s Roost helped out, catering lunches for the volunteers.
Dodge said the family didn’t expect to get a Habitat home for a few years.
“We were just trying to get our foot in the door,” he said. “We weren’t expecting to get one right off the bat. I guess it was lots of prayers.”
, DataTimes