Most people greeted the wake of the Nor”™easter of 2007 cleaning up, sympathizing or counting their blessings. Seventeen-year Prudential Serles Realtor Doreen Trojan, a board member for Rebuilding Together, took another tack through the still-soggy world. Working alongside 40 volunteers of all ages, she helped 84-year-old Anna Temple of Wappingers Falls fix her house.
The dismal rains that dampened Hudson Valley spirits last month lifted, giving the volunteers a dry April 28 with a bit of sunshine thrown in for good measure. For the elderly owner of the modest, two-story clapboard home in Dutchess County, having her windows, doors, floors and roof repaired, it didn”™t matter what the weather was doing: it was a perfect day, a day a dream came true.
Volunteers were busy scraping old paint off the window sashes, rebuilding Temple”™s front porch, patching the roof and doing interior work the retired grandmother couldn”™t afford to do on her own. The Dutchess County chapter of Rebuilding Together is a part of a nationwide movement to help the elderly, disabled and low-income families with children who cannot afford needed home repairs.
“We received over 100 applications for 20 homes this year,” said Trojan, who spends most of her time with people shopping for homes in the $600,000 bracket. For the folks who benefit from Rebuilding Together, homeownership in itself is a dream they desperately want to hold onto. But any house is a study in deterioration ”“ sometimes slow, sometimes not ”“ and maintenance can prove a gnawing animal bent on devouring a small bank account.
“It”™s a tough decision to make: who can you say ”˜yes”™ to, and who do you have to tell didn”™t get picked this time around,” Trojan said. “There is gratification for those you can help and sadness for those you have to turn away.”
Trojan, along with her co-workers from Rebuilding Tomorrow, got a financial boost for Temple”™s makeover from NXP Semiconductor in the amount of $3,000, with Rebuilding Tomorrow kicking in the balance of the funds: around $2,000, said Trojan.
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“Sponsor companies are always welcome and wanted to donate to this worthy cause,” said Trojan. Volunteers from the Greater Southern Dutchess Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Dutchess County Community Foundation”™s Leadership Dutchess class joined others hard at work turning Temple”™s home despair into needed home repair.
“We try to get all the work done in one day. Right now, all 20 homes that were selected are getting their repairs done today,” said Trojan, taking a break from the sweat equity she and the team were putting into Temple”™s home. “If it is going to take a few days longer, we explain this to the homeowners, and they work around the schedules of our volunteers, who have regular day jobs to go to and do this in their spare time.”
Referrals for the Rebuilding Together program come from a variety of sources, said Trojan. “We put ads in the local papers. Some people learn of our program through their church. And most of our town supervisors and mayors know the folks in their community who are need. They”™ll submit a name to us.”
Temple, who watched the men and women working tirelessly to make her home bright and beautiful, was all smiles and couldn”™t believe how “lucky I am”¦truly blessed to be having this done. It”™s like a miracle.”
Words like those make the day all the more worthwhile for Trojan. “Seeing the joy on the homeowner”™s face is an unending source of joy for me, too,” said the veteran Realtor.
It can be heart-wrenching for Trojan, who has to choose the lucky homeowners who will get their repairs done and, by default, those who won”™t. But she says she wouldn”™t trade her volunteerism with Rebuilding Tomorrow for the world. She got involved with the program through the Dutchess Board of Realtors, one of the program”™s sponsors, about 10 years ago. “The next thing I knew, I was on the board,” she said. Now she”™s been tapped to chair the Rebuild Tomorrow Golf Tournament, which will be held at the Dutchess Country Club in Poughkeepsie on Sept. 27. “It”™s our biggest fundraiser of the year,” said Trojan. “It makes this ”˜Rebuilding Day”™ possible.”
To help, the Web address is: www.rebuildingtogether.org.
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