Four Decades Later

Build-your-own home program celebrates 40th anniversary.

By Diwata Fonte / The Fresno Bee

Mary Lupercio helped to build her Orosi home almost 40 years ago as part of one of the first Self-Help Enterprises subdivisions. Christian Parley / The Fresno Bee E-mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Receive the Daily Bulletin Subscribe to Print Join a Forum   Search News  | Search Local

Mary Lupercio, 65, of Orosi does not remember many details of building her pea-green, single-story home on Avenue 414 in the mid-1960s.

A little painting here, a little flooring there. They went easy on her as the only woman on the crew working with the newly formed Self-Help Enterprises.

But a lifetime has happened since she and her neighbors built their own homes, she explains. All her children have grown up and moved away. She got divorced, and remarried, and now has more than 20 grandchildren.

To get an idea of when they first moved into the house on Avenue 414, "my youngest was only 18 months," she said. "Now he's 40."

Lupercio and her family were some of the earliest participants of Visalia-based Self-Help Enterprises, an affordable-housing organization that celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

Over the past four decades, thousands of San Joaquin Valley families like Mary Lupercio's have grown up with assistance from Self-Help.

In the model that is still intact today, Lupercio and her group of low-income residents spent 40 hours a week framing, nailing and roofing their then-$7,800 homes. Since then, other programs have been added to the nonprofit, such as housing rehabilitation and multifamily rentals and homeowner education classes at Ruiz Foods headquarters in Dinuba.

Self-Help Enterprises operates with a budget of about $6 million and 78 employees, said chief executive Peter Carey.

Project sites span from Stanislaus to Kern counties in communities such as Goshen, Richgrove, Mariposa, Lindsay and Newman. Compared with the 1960s, when the concept of low- income homeowners building their own homes together was just catching on, the concept of self-help is in action throughout the nation. Today, more than 100 organizations nationwide provide self-help housing programs in rural areas, Carey said.

Self-Help boasts that it is the oldest and largest of these Self-Help housing organizations in the nation. The organization was spearheaded by Bard McAllister, a Quaker who came to Visalia in 1956 to improve the life of farm laborers, and incorporated in 1965.

Habitat for Humanity International, while similar, is not considered "self-help" housing because it uses a different model based on volunteers, Carey said.

Since then, more than 5,000 families have built new homes for themselves and more than 5,000 have rehabilitated their homes. Almost 40,000 weather-proofed their houses, and nearly 20,000 received sewer and water connections.

The role of Self-Help is to help bring together different organizations and faraway funds and make them work for local projects, Carey said.

For instance, this month Self-Help Enterprises was awarded $757,500 in loans and grants from the Housing Assistance Council, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

Most of the money comes from the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program, which helps nonprofit organizations acquire land and prepare sites for low-income home buyers.

Woodlake is one rural city that has benefited from the organization. Self-Help is buying substandard houses and underused land and turning them into residential tract homes for low-income residents. The infill project will last 10 years, said city administrator Bill Lewis.

Lewis said city officials sought Self-Help Enterprises for the project because of its leaders' track record.

"They're easy to work with, they're knowledgeable and they're passionate about housing," he said.

"We knew we would get a good product from them. ... In our [Self-Help Enterprises] subdivisions here, you can see the staying power; there is pride in it. In fact, the last one they did, I don't think they've had a house sold in that particular subdivision."

Self-Help has partnered with the Tulare County city for about 25 years, he said.

Besides the individual homes, the organization's success is measured in the help it gives similar organizations, says Self-Help's first board chairman, Ralph Rosedale. "It's been a guide for lots of other self-help housing across the country. There's a greater need for housing in rural communities now than there ever was, especially for low-income people."

Rosedale is starting a similar self-help organization in East Texas with support from Self-Help.

"They give me a lot of advice," he said. "It's unbelievable the amount of cooperation I got from them; I wouldn't be able to do this without them."

Success also is measured in the stability that homeownership brought to each family.

Looking back almost 40 years, Lupercio is proud that her children did not have to grow up like she and her 10 siblings, a migrant farm family sleeping in one place and waking up in another.

"I actually think it made a big impact, owning a home and not moving around," she said.

Lupercio noted, for instance, that her eldest daughter made it through college to become a nurse practitioner.

While Self-Help still caters to low- and very-low-income residents, who earn less than 80% of the area's median income, the organization has been involved in more urban projects such as a subdivision in southeast Fresno. Michael Lane, management analyst with Self Help Enterprises, estimates that 30% of its projects now occur in urban areas.

Farmworkers make up a major portion of participants, but Self-Help is finding that more service and factory workers fall into the lowest income brackets. Another notable change in their participants is an increase in families with two wage-earners, Carey said. It is difficult for parents to contribute 40 hours a week toward building a home when both of them work.

While some positive changes have occurred over the past 40years, such as a stronger network and more funding sources, employees say the challenges to provide affordable housing loom as large as ever.

Rising land and construction costs, the complexity of development and the prevalent rural poverty make their jobs just as difficult. Wages are not keeping pace with housing prices.

"That's where the crunch has come," Lane said.

With each new project, there are thousands of families on the program's waiting lists. The multifamily housing projects fill up in days.

Plans for the organization are meant to head off these challenges. One immediate goal is to plan ahead for rising land costs. Self-Help is raising $3 million for "land banking," to buy land now for projects later, Carey said.

In his 31-year career with Self-Help from volunteer to CEO, Carey has seen efforts for affordable housing grow in complexity, but it's a trend that is likely to continue.

"I suspect there will be people looking back today," he said, "as the day when things were easier."

Dalvir Singh, left, and Gloria Munez, right, load sand into a wheelbarrow in preparation for a house's foundation. The house is part of a Self-Help Enterprises neighborhood going up in Del Rey. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee

The reporter can be reached at dfonte@fresnobee.com or (559) 622-2419.