by William Cracraft

The Rural California Housing Corporation is helping low income families in Brentwood finance and build their own homes. RCHC provides the finance packaging, construction supervision and supply ordering. The home buyers provide the labor, making concrete forms, laying floors, building walls and nailing on shingles.

Maria Montes home is a legacy from her mother who made arrangements for the project but died last year before the building started(be sure of that). Montes, 23, and her brother Roberto, 21, finished the home at the end of May. Neither of them had any construction experience

“It was hard work, especially myself being a girl,” she said. “We started working in late August. It was hot and it was hard labor.” The Montes built a two bedroom, one bath home with a living room, dining room, single garage and a spacious backyard for about $100,000. Their home is one of a group of six single family homes and two duplexes in the just-finished 102-home Brentwood development.

Now, the RCHC is planning a new 65-home development in Brentwood. Stan Keasling, executive director of RCHC said the nonprofit corporation develops affordable housing opportunities for low income people in 14 counties, including Contra Costa County. “Frankly, we already have a waiting list that probably could fill the whole subdivision, but we are required to do affirmative fair marketing,” said Keasling.

“Usually we end up just having a lottery where we just assign applications numbers and then start working down the lists.” Most of the funds for his program are from a renewable U.S. Department of Agriculture grant “that pays the lights and the computers and the salaries and all that kind of stuff,” said Jaspin.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development is contributing $411,000 to the new Brentwood development, according to a press release. To qualify, buyers must have an income below 80% of the county median, which is $50,000 in Contra Costa, meaning that buyers must make under $42,000. In addition, said Keasling, they have to have good credit and must be willing to build the house themselves.

Families are required to put in a minimum of 35 hours per week. “If the families are diligent about it, it is pretty typical that they will build in about 8 months,” said Keasling. The families actually do seventy percent of the construction work, said Keasling. “It’s easier to tell you what we don’t do,” he said with a laugh. “We subcontract out the finish of the concrete, the plumbing, the insulation and drywall and the installation of the heating units.

We have our own construction staff who oversee the construction process so that we teach the families how to do the work that they do and kind of order materials and schedules materials and schedule subcontractors.” Jose Ibarra, 23, CONFIRM BOTH AGES said he and his wife,22, applied for the program in 1993. They started work September 4, 1995. They and their two children moved into their three bedroom, one-and-a-half bath home in late May. With the move came a $105,000 mortgage.

Ibarra, a custodian at Oakly Union School District, works evenings so could put in six or seven hours on the house during the day. He had help from his wife, his father, her father, his brother and others. “I put in about 40 hours per week,” he said. Montes, who works in retail clothing, and her brother each put in half the hours required. “Of course once in while one of us would put in less and the other person would have to carry the other persons weight. “It worked out pretty good,” she said.”I helped put on my roof, I helped with the foundation, I helped with the electrical work, everything.”

The pressure caused a few flare-ups between the siblings. “We had our days,” Montes said with a laugh. “I think everyone got on each other. It happens. We see each other every day and sometimes things don’t go right, Its only normal for it to happen. “I thinks its fine we all helped each other and that was the good thing about it, you’re not just here on your own. You’re with everyone else and everyone supports you,” said Montes.

“We had a lot of help.” Joel Jaspin, 53, single family housing manager at RCHC, has supervised the building of about 900 homes in the nine years he has worked at RCHC. “We’ve had an incredibly good labor force in Brentwood. they were just crackerjacks,” Jaspin said. The Brentwood project has been nine-year project. “It took six years to get to building and we built all the homes in just three years flat,” said Jaspin.

Jaspin said there is a natural tendency on the part of families to work mostly on their own home. “For the first half of construction they generally work on everybody else’s house,” he said. “When they get down to the finish work, that breaks down some and they start working pretty much on their own houses. ” Foremen do not assign tasks to families based on which house they’re going to be living in, said Jaspin. “We assign tasks based on what the needs are at the moment and the skills of the people that are there at the moment to work.”

Since the families all work on each other’s houses, he said, “nobody moves in until they all move in.” We assign one construction supervisor to each group, said Jaspin. “Our construction supervisors have over thirty years experience and they are with the families literally night and day. Teaching them what to do, supervising them while they do it. They are the ones who schedule the materials deliveries and the sub contracts and inspections with the city and Rural Development.”

Training was good, said Ibarra, and many skills will translate to home repair. “if I run into a problem I’m sure I can repair it myself,” he said. “Our foreman was there so he just basically shows us how to do it. If we had any questions we could just go to him. We did have some people here who knew something about construction, were carpenters or whatnot and that helped us out a lot,” said Montes.

“All of the task are unfamiliar to them so you kind of get an evenness throughout,” said Jaspin. “I don’t think they have anymore trouble say with concrete forming than they do with electric wiring, for example. “They are instructed on each and it’s a step-by-step process. You don’t just tell somebody well, go wire this house, this is how you do it. You tell them this is the first step, this is the second step, drill this hole, but this box here.” Ibarra and Montes both agreed the roof trusses were the toughest part of building the homes.

“I didn’t want to take part in it,” Montes said. “I stayed down below and watched the men take care of that. I was too scared to climb up on the studs of the house. They were up on the frames with nothing surrounding them.” Subcontractors do the trickiest work. “The sheet rock, they don’t do because its heavy and its at a phase of construction when its time for the families to have a little break,” said Keasling. “The insulation we sub out because, in fact, you buy it installed from an insulation contractor cheaper than you can buy it yourself.”

Of course problems occur. “We had a couple houses once where the concrete forms got set up wrong. The house was like, two feet shorter than it should be,” said Jaspin. “We went back and added two feet to the foundations, almost like doing a mini room addition. We had to go back to the building department and say this is what we did and this is how we’re going to fix it.” The only glitch Ibarra noticed in the houses in his group was a minor one.”One air conditioning vent came out wrong,” he said.

“It did not have to be redone, just worked around.” “We had to go through inspections and all of our inspections passed. There were a couple of things we had to level out in the back yard so water would run to the gutters,” said Montes. “If it isn’t right we have our families tear it out and we don’t hesitate,” said Jaspin. “You do it until you get it right.” Since the buyers pay any additional cost they start to get pretty careful. You get what you inspect, not what you expect,” he added.

Jaspin’s biggest problem is motivating families to put in hours consistently. “They’re working nights and weekends on their houses and they do tend to poop out on us,” he said. But there are also problem families, he said, who don’t pull their weight. Montes agreed.

“For instance, me and my brother were one of them. It was hard. My brother and I, we both have full time jobs with two days off per week. Sometimes it was hard for us to get out there and put our hours in. “I think a lot of other families weren’t too happy with us at times. We might have been behind at times, but we always ended up pulling through,” said Montes.

But, over all, “it was a good experience, everybody works together and we all just try to get it done,” Ibarra said. Jaspin said it is personally rewarding to watch the homes go up. “It keeps you working. When I’m really tired, disgusted, overworked and so forth, that’s the thing that I think about, is how much these people work. Most of them they will do virtually anything to make sure that house gets done.

“I’ve watched them out there in the pouring rain in the middle of the winter blocking because that’s what needed to be done. Or with the lights on at eleven o’clock at night doing a driveway because they are getting ready to pour it or need to have it inspected the next day.” The last thing before moving in is the RCHC inspection. “They do their inspection and about every twenty minutes or so you hear this ‘yay’ all over the subdivision as their house is signed off and as of that instant they can start moving in. It’s a real upper,” said Jaspin.

“It looks great. It’s amazing. It’s like gosh, once this was dirt and now it’s actually a house,” Montes said. “I love being able to say, yeah me and my brother built our house.”