What a Difference a Year Makes
- By Joe O'Neill -

At one Habitat family's yard, a trapoline and a corner lot draw legions of neighborhood kids to play - and to show off a Houston HFH calendar featuring pictures from the 1998 JCWP

Broyles Avenue resident Flossie Johnson remembers well the way it used to be in Houston's hardscrabble, low-income Fifth Ward: evenings punctuated by gunshots, burglars preying with impunity. There was even the night she had to hide under her bed to escape detection by an intruder.

She recalls those siege-mentality years vividly because they weren't very long ago - waning and then ending with preparations for the June 1998 Jimmy Carter Work Project. Where once the 70-ish Johnson would peer tentatively from behind burglar bars at dilapidated apartments and weedy lots across the street, she now sits placidly on her porch and beholds a tableau out of an urban renewal handbook.

She cites new sidewalks and vastly improved street lighting and points approvingly to a nearby Habitat house that is aesthetically encircled by rose bushes.

"The crime and break-ins were something terrible," says Johnson. "But what a difference [the JCWP] has made. Now I sit here and look at the nice houses with nice driveways and lots of youngsters playing, and I say, 'Thank God and thank Habitat and thank President Carter.' I had no idea it would look like this. Now I feel secure in my own home."

While the most obvious impact of Houston's 100-house 1998 Jimmy Carter Work Project is 100 families with a new lease on life, those new residences represent the epicenter of a communitywide ripple effect, say those uniquely positioned to know.

"The [JCWP] Habitat program has had a tremendous impact on the east end of Houston," states Sgt. Mark Newcomb of the Houston Police Department's eastside division. "It's rejuvenated the neighborhood and created a positive environment. I've personally observed the pride and care the new [Habitat] neighbors have displayed towards their homes. I've also seen the surrounding area benefit by showing a decrease in crime."

No less impressed -- and appreciative -- of the JCWP impact is Judy Butler, special program coordinator for Houston Mayor Lee P. Brown. Within her purview is Houston's community-revitalizing program. Houston HFH in general, and the JCWP specifically, have acted as major complements to the program, says Butler.

"There's a lot more emphasis on affordable housing as a result of the Jimmy Carter Work Project," she says. "What we all want are stable neighborhoods. And to have that, you need homeowners and their purchasing power. Habitat has literally created neighborhoods. It's one of the few organizations to provide the means to homeownership to those who couldn't otherwise afford it.

Teresa and Harry Russell say their Habitat house has given them a "second chance."

And the result of that then ripples to the surrounding area."

Its ripples reach people such as Larry Merchant, a longtime employee of the Bali-Hai Food Market, adjacent to a Fifth Ward neighborhood of 35 JCWP homes.

"You know, I just like looking over there," muses Merchant. "It's so much cleaner. The people seem nice, and we're starting to see more business. It also seems a lot safer, because this area is better patrolled."

One of those 35 homes across Sakowitz Street from Bali-Hai is owned by Joycelyn Wyatt, 46 years old and the early driving force behind efforts to organize a neighborhood civic club. The mother of two is also not far removed from the welfare rolls, a substance-abuse habit and substandard housing. She's also battling breast cancer.

"She is a good, hard-working woman who really has had to struggle," says Clyde Bridges, a member of the Houston HFH board and the house leader on Wyatt's JCWP home. "She's a good example of what a Habitat 'hand up' is all about. I'd call her the honor grad of a group that was most in need."

Wyatt, a resilient sort with an easy smile, acknowledges the precarious return trip from her personal abyss.

"I've come a long way," says Wyatt, who works as a secretary at nearby Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. "God's grace and mercy got me back where I am, and now my boys and me have our own house. Thanks to Habitat, my boys have a better chance of growing up to be respectable young men, because they have a better environment without so many bad influences," she says. It requires constant vigilance, points out Wyatt.

"The thing about Joyce is that she's a fighter who has the support of both loving family and friends," notes the Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., pastor of Pleasant Hill. "The Habitat experience has been an additional and necessary reinforcement to a life finally headed in the right direction." Around the corner from the Wyatt family live Nancy Rosas, her husband, Richard Jaso, and their four children. Before the JCWP, they lived with their two youngest children in the garage at Richard's mother's house.

"When we were chosen for a Habitat house, it was like a big burden had been lifted," explains Rosas, who works as a patient coordinator for a plastic surgeon. "Now my family is back together."

Jaso, a shipping coordinator for a petroleum-drilling company, is the neighborhood's resident handyman who helps neighbors with domestic chores such as hanging fans and installing outdoor lighting.

"Everybody knows everybody and we all watch out for each other," says Jaso.

Another family unit that has literally grown with the move to a JCWP house is that of Harry and Teresa Russell. "We have room for our daughter and her family, and I thank God every day for this house and the wonderful people who collaborated on it," says Teresa, now recovering from a stroke that was preceded by open-heart surgery.

Her 70-year-old husband, a retired oil-industry engineer, has lost his voice to throat cancer, but hasn't lost his spirit.

"Living here has given us more freedom to move around and meet new neighbors," writes Harry on his ever-present legal pad. "This is a nice, quiet neighborhood, where people respect one another." He pauses before penciling in a final thought: "Without Habitat we would be living day to day, as our incomes would barely cover expenses," he writes. "We thank God and Habitat for this second chance and a way to stay together as a family."


Joe O'Neill is a writer based in Tampa, Fla. He covered the 1998 Jimmy Carter Work Project in Houston, Texas, for Habitat World and revisited the project in May.


Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, August/September, 1999.
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©1999 Habitat for Humanity International