Rebuilding Together Northern Nevada, a 501 c3 organization, which came to existence just two years ago, repairs homes to “revitalize communities.” It’s part of a national entity with over 120 chapters.
“I had grandparents or grandmothers that were in their nineties and even 103 and it just seemed like, it's nice to be able to help folks that don't have the ability physically, maybe financially to live comfortably and safely. And so it seemed like a good, a good fit,” says Katie Pace (upper left in photo montage) of becoming executive director of an organization which has a mission to ensure safe and healthy housing for those with a crumbling infrastructure.
“Rebuilding Together Northern Nevada helps homeowners, low income homeowners with repairs, home repairs at no cost to them,” she explained during a recent Our Town Reno interview. “Currently we're in Washoe County and Carson City,” Pace said.
Homeowners do go through a vetting process before they can benefit from the free help, with certain requirements to qualify.
“We have income eligibility,” Pace said. “They must own the home. They must not be in foreclosure. They must be current on their mortgage and their property taxes. Then we also collect their identification so that it matches with the residency and bank statements. So there's a little bit of a vetting process.”
The main focus has been seniors, veterans and people with disabilities, “so that they can age in place, so they're not forced out of their home because they can't get around their home. So we'd like to help with either safety bars, bathroom modifications, accessibility and livability in the home. And when we do our marketing, we target community-based organizations like Aging and Disability Services.”
A big part of Pace’s work is getting volunteers to work on project and fundraising with grants and donations.
For some big projects a corporation will be sponsor and bring volunteers to help.
“Our first project was with Wells Fargo. So they brought 15 of their employees. We cleaned a lady's front yard added gravel … to make it zeroscape. So she had low maintenance, she's in a wheelchair and she had a disabled son as well. So all the things that we were doing, we were trying to low maintenance her home for her so she could get around easier and it was still appealing to the neighborhood. We also cleaned out the backyard. We gave her a new deck because the ramp [she had] was not secure anymore. So we had a ramp now that was able for her to get onto the deck. We trimmed a tree prior to that and then we also did a bathroom modification for her… The Wells Fargo employees were there to help us. We had two dumpsters full of unwanted items that they helped remove. Those are things that she wasn't able to do physically, remove some of these very large items. “
Being part of a national group helps with other projects. “We can make decisions on our own, but they provide templates and they provide ability to apply for grants,” Pace explained. “So they're out getting national partnerships for local chapters to then apply to our own organization for funding. So they provide a lot of support, a lot of guidance, technical contracts, releases, home agreements and whatnot.”
The organization also helped revitalize the Eddy House, with reflooring, painting with branded homey colors, and adding a wall to create office space.
Pace said Rebuilding Together Northern Nevada has a mission which “falls in line with preservation of housing,” which helps people stay housed.
“They don't have to move into a rental market where they don't have control over their budget,” Pace said. “And this way they can stay where most of our homeowners have been in their homes for 15, 20, even 30 years. So they're not just coming in. They want to be where they are. That's where they've been for many years. And so being able to help them stay where they are comfortable is important. Many of our homeowners are living on Social Security, so they're very low income. So if they need food and medicine, those are the things they're paying for first. So maintenance of the home can be difficult for them if they have a pricey hot water heater.”
By helping with housing, Pace says she is also helping with the health of those being helped.
“If you have shelter and you have a safe place to live, that goes a long way for quality of life, physically, mentally, independence, and so being able to help people in our community live safely is important.”
Short staffing and in this case also finding volunteers and contractors has been a challenge coming out of the pandemic.
“Being able to get to our projects as quickly as we want to because we're just two [staff]. We have volunteers helping with our application process. So sometimes it moves a little bit slowly for me. I'd like us to go a little bit faster and then being able to have contractors, because we pay our contractors to do skilled labor. The very important work in a home, whether it's plumbing or electrical roofing, flooring…”
Pace say Rebuilding Together Northern Nevada is always looking for good contractors to pay as well as volunteers. And not just the handy come in handy in this case.
“We’ll ask if you have skills, and then once we have repairs and whatnot, then we email our volunteers to step forward for certain projects that we might have. We do have lots of different types of positions for volunteers. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone swinging a hammer or you know, cleaning up a yard. We could use help with our social media posts.”
Current plans are to expand to 10 counties in Nevada, to help people in need in rural areas as well.