Two Shreveport families will be getting new homes thanks to The Fuller Center for Housing.

Volunteers and college students from Idaho, Minnesota and Texas will be working alongside the families to construct the homes in the Allendale neighborhood starting today. The project coincides with the Fifth Anniversary Celebration of The Fuller Center for Housing.

Construction will continue during the week, and volunteers can still sign up to help. The houses, located at 1433 and 1437 Alston St., will be dedicated at noon March 20. Upon completion, the Christian nonprofit will have built a total of 42 houses in the neighborhood. To volunteer, call The Fuller Center office at (318) 221-7474 or e-mail info@fullercenternwla.org.

© Shreveport Times

The Fuller Center is a post-Katrina success story. Its work in the Allendale neighborhood, alongside Community Renewal International, is transforming the previously crime- and drug-ridden part of downtown Shreveport. The local Fuller Center partner has built or repaired 75 houses, providing simple, decent shelter for almost 200 people in Allendale.

Since The Fuller Center began building in 2005, crime has dropped in Allendale 55 percent. Emergency phone calls from the areas where Fuller Center houses are clustered have dropped nearly 90 percent.

In 2010, a grocery store will open in Allendale, encouraged by the Fuller Center’s success. The nearest store with affordable, fresh food is currently ten miles away, making shopping difficult for elderly residents and those without cars. There is also a new playground for children and a community garden now tended to by several residents.

“Many years ago this was one of the worst communities in the city. Homicides, crime, gang activity – you name it,” said Jewel Mariner, a community coordinator in Allendale. “It’s amazing to see the transformation in people’s lives and in this neighborhood. People used to just call this The Hill. Now it’s New Hope Hill.”

The Fuller Center is celebrating its fifth anniversary and the ongoing success of the Allendale project by returning to Louisiana between March 15 and 27 to build five houses with its three local partners – Shreveport, Hammond and Webster Parish.

Additional Information:

The Fuller Center for Housing is an ecumenical Christian non-profit started in 2005 by Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller as a way to continue his vision of a grassroots movement working to eliminate poverty housing worldwide. The Fuller Center is based in Americus, Ga., and is currently working in nearly 60 U.S. cities and 17 countries. Visit FullerCenter.org for more information.

SOURCE: The Fuller Center For Housing

“If they go on a bus, you know you can’t carry too much food on the bus,” said Rosie Chaffold, Allendale resident. “Many times after you’ve bought your 50 dollars worth of groceries you only have 10 extra dollars to pay somebody to take you and bring you back.”

Chaffold says there are corner stores in the community. However Chaffold says the food is not always fresh or affordable.

The Fuller Center for Housing hopes to open the grocery store by the end of the year.

Reported by: Amber Miller

A partnership was formed that is now helping residents in other cities as well. The Fuller Center builds houses; CRI builds community. Together, we are “Building on Higher Ground” to help those who lack the resources and the relationships that could make home ownership possible on their own.

The vision goes beyond building houses for a few. We are building hope for many. Shreveport’s Allendale neighborhood – an area of decaying houses, high crime and little income – was chosen for the launch of the “Higher Ground” initiative. With hundreds of volunteers coming from throughout the nation, this once forgotten neighborhood is now a place of new hope and new beginnings that is receiving worldwide attention.

Community Renewal International

A garden grows where trash and bottles once filled a vacant lot. Children gather on a playground built by a local service club. Residents who were once too frightened to come out of their houses now laugh and eat together at neighborhood block parties.

“Many years ago this was one of the worst communities in the city. Homicides, crime, gang activity – you name it and it was here,” said Jewel Mariner, one of two CRI Community Coordinators in Allendale. She lives in a Friendship House that has become an anchor for the neighborhood.

“It’s amazing to see the transformation in people’s lives and in this neighborhood. People used to just call this The Hill. Now it’s New Hope Hill. People in the community now have hope.”

By the start of 2007, little more than one year after work started, 23 new houses had been built in the community. Each one has its own unique features, designs and color schemes. Several of the new homeowners have become CRI Haven House leaders and now reach out to others in the neighborhood.

“I want to be a light on the hill. I care about my community and I want us to come together,” said Dorothy Wiley, who made a new start in Shreveport after she and her family were trapped in the New Orleans Superdome for four days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home. “You build a neighborhood by being a neighbor to everybody. You develop relationships one person at a time.”

The Higher Ground project was launched by Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity and then later of The Fuller Center for Housing.

“We are here to transform this city. We have the opportunity to make this one of the most beautiful cities in the country,” he said. “It’s so exciting that Community Renewal International and the Friendship Houses are here. You can build houses, but if you don’t build community, it will all fall apart.”

For Allendale, Night Out’s crime awareness message hits particularly close to home. It is a neighborhood revitalized, said Shreveport police Cpl. Lonnie Haskins, who has been assigned to that district since he joined the force in 1997 and attended Tuesday’s event along with other police officers and firefighters.

Parents were grilling out and chatting with each other while children laughed, ate hot dogs, made sidewalk art, jumped in a bouncy house and explored a fire engine.

“In ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, we were bumpin’ and gunnin’ out here,” Haskins said of Allendale, where at the time at least five calls for service poured in each night. He’s seen the neighborhood turn around, something he said he never envisioned could happen and for which he credits the Fuller Center for Housing of Northwest Louisiana and Friendship Houses.

Sherry Brown, 40, works for Community Renewal International and lives in one of the two Friendship Houses in the 1500 block of Clay, where trim and prim affordable houses built by the Fuller Center line the streets.

Harkening back to the neighborhood’s violent past and in the spirit of Night Out, Fuller Housing recipient and neighbor Dorothy Wiley, 55, made a poster with a clever acronym.

“Let’s say no to:
“C-arrying concealed firearms without a permit
“R-ape
“I-llegal possession of drugs/firearms
“M-anslaughter
“E-ntry of an inhabited dwelling.”

She posted it on the front door of one of the two Friendship Houses.

Rudolph Glass Jr., 45, and his wife immediately began to regret their decision when they bought a house on Clay 12 years ago. Not so now.

“Things really started to change when they put the Friendship House in. And ever since then it’s just been getting better and better and better,” said Glass, who has manned the grill at each of the past seven Night Out parties.

Community Renewal International’s Brown says it all starts by meeting the needs of neighborhood children, which works as a domino effect in involving their parents.

Glass’ 15-year-old son, Rudolph Glass III, has attended after-school programs at the Friendship Houses the past seven years. As the high school student helped tear down equipment from the party and carry boxes to cars, his father explained that he’s involved in the neighborhood association and attends parent meetings in a neighborhood he didn’t want to be a part of 12 years ago.

Source: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009911040314

Not far from Alston Street, volunteers slipped on their gardening gloves and got a little dirty to clean up the Asian Gardens at Milam and Common streets. The Aseana Foundation, which manages the downtown garden, put on the event in partnership with Make a Difference Day.

“I just thank everyone who thought enough of me to come out here and work,” Sullivan said. “I’ve been blessed with a house before. The house before was from my parents, but this one is mine — it’s a lot different,” she said with big smile.

Make A Difference Day 2009

Walker said she never dreamed she’d be a homeowner at age 22. The house was originally built to be handicap accessible, but during the build process Walker’s grandmother, who applied for the house and convinced Walker to be a co-applicant, passed away.

“I say she knew that she was going to pass away. That’s why she wanted me to be the co-applicant,” Walker said, calling the house a blessing for her and her 5-year-old son, Rodrigues Walker.

Walker grew up in Allendale and her approaching move-in date is bringing her full circle. From birth to age 12, Walker lived in a small house on the very lot where her new three-bedroom, two-bathroom house stands in the 1400 block of Alston Street. She said she was shocked when she learned months ago the location of her future house.

Just outside her kitchen door is a sidewalk adjoining her house to the house of soon-to-be-neighbor Sullivan, 67, the woman’s granddaughter and two grandchildren.

In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached, Sullivan and her family vowed to leave together and stay together or not leave at all. “There were 21 of us, and we left in my granddaughter’s Hyundai Elantra.”

Walker’s and Sullivan’s houses are the 39th and 40th houses completed by the Fuller Housing Center.

“When we undertook our 40th home — 40 is typically a number of trials and tribulations — we knew we would have some trials and tribulations,” said Lee Jeter, the center’s executive director.

Construction began Aug. 31 and as deadline — Make a Difference Day — approached, the rains came.

The constant rain over the past two weeks “has proven this house is built on the rock,” Jake Owensby, dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, said alluding to Matthew 7:25, which reads “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Receiving the keys to their homes is not the last step, but the first step, in the women’s path to home ownership, according to Katie Weir, co-chair of the center’s board.

Sullivan and Walker will each close on their house later this week and enter a 20-year, no-interest mortgage. Their mortgage payments, set between $350 and $400, pay for the cost of the building materials.

The formerly adjudicated property the houses are built on is donated as well as all labor and some materials. And the city’s role in donating the land is one Mayor Cedric Glover said “represents the greatest of win-win scenarios the city likes to be involved in.”

The city is able to move out of the red when these property are no longer their responsibility to maintain. “We’re returning stakeholders to this community,” Glover said.

© Kelsey McKinney/Shreveport-Times