Habitat for Humanity helping repair its damaged homes in Charlotte County

Hurricane Ian damaged 200 Habitat for Humanity homes in Charlotte County, and now, Habitat for Humanity is helping repair their partner family homes that sustained damage.

Habitat for Humanity is teaming up with students from Charlotte County’s JROTC and State Farm to help build and repair homes damaged by the hurricane. The effort is funded by a $20,000 grant from Habitat for Humanity International and State Farm.

Habitat partners with low-income families within our community to provide them with safe, decent, affordable homeownership.

This latest grant allows them to make those necessary repairs for homeowners at no cost to them.

State Farm agents will be at one of Habitat for Humanity’s build sites where they were working before the hurricane did some damage. Agents will be working alongside members from the Ida Baker High School JROTC program, putting up vinyl and working on the home’s interior walls.

Hallie Rubins is the director of development for Charlotte County Habitat for Humanity, and she said they wouldn’t be able to do what they do without help from their volunteers.

“As you get further into the process, with the wall raise, you get all of the outside walls up. So now, we have that structure in place. And with this, we’ll be putting on the vinyl siding on the housing. So, some of that was damaged during the hurricane. So, the funds from this grant will help us replace those materials get everything up. And you’ll also be able to see the interior walls go up. So, it makes it a little easier to see the layout of the house than just a slab, and you really kind of get to see how everything comes together,” said Rubins. “It’s really allowing us to immediately make repairs to our homeowner’s homes along with those homes that we had started pre-hurricane that had some damage to really get back to some sort of normalcy. And we’re turning this optical obstacle into an opportunity for not only the homeowners, our volunteers, but for ourselves. We really come together as an affiliate and our staff here.”

In Charlotte County alone, approximately 200 habitat homes sustained damage from the storm. Habitat said it had done about 100 repairs to homes, with a lot more to go.