Nonprofit provides home restorations for low-income families
Late last month, more than two dozen people armed with hammers and buckets of paint descended on Roosevelt Fields’ longtime North Las Vegas home.
Thankfully for Fields, they were invited, just a handful of the 1,500 mobilized by nonprofit Rebuilding Together Southern Nevada and corporate co-sponsors at NV Energy to help celebrate National Rebuilding Day on April 27.
Fields, a former count room employee at Circus Circus, has lived in the same North Las Vegas home for 35 years.
He said the white-clad NV Energy and nonprofit volunteers — who helped reshingle Fields’ roof, fix his backyard gate and repaint his siding — are welcome back anytime.
Volunteers stopped by to install a new air conditioner less than two weeks later.
“They were all beautiful, friendly people,” the 77-year-old retiree said. “They fixed whatever needed to be fixed: sprayed the windows, changed the shingles. I was really proud of them.
“They were real quiet and friendly. They did a great job.”
Retired for more than a decade, Fields lives with a caretaker and said he hasn’t been able to do home repairs for eight or nine years. He found out about the program through his daughter-in-law, one of more than 6,000 to enlist themselves or a family member in the nonprofit’s home repair program since 1994.
Most of those live below the poverty line, according to RTSNV executive director Cynthia Baca.
She said group volunteers — who patched up eight military families’ homes last fall in honor of Veterans Day — are on pace to repaint, repair and rehabilitate around 600 homes by the end of this year, a service the group has provided free to low-income qualified homeowners for almost two decades.
Sometimes, they’re the only ones around to do it.
“The cities have a variety of emergency repair programs,” Baca said. “But in a lot of cases, those have been cut or at least had to cut back on personnel.
“Right now, we’re the only nonprofit that does exclusively home repairs.”
The 17 homes Baca and others helped fix across the Las Vegas Valley last month look like a drop in the bucket compared to the 4,000 projects undertaken by 70,000 volunteers in honor of National Rebuilding Day nationwide.
But for homeowners such as Fields, all that matters is that the hammers keep swinging.
That’s why in two decades with the organization, Baca said she rarely has heard a complaint.
“It’s energizing work, but it’s also exhausting,” Baca said. “It puts your faith back in humanity to see people really stepping up. It’s very heartening.”
For more information on next year’s National Rebuilding Day, contact project manager Therese Elliott at 702-259-4900.
For more information or to volunteer, visit rebuildingtogether.org or call 702-259-4900.
Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.
