Philanthropy Today
Philanthropy Today
Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Flint Hills on the GMCF Community Hour Show Episode -182
Join us as we celebrate Jimmy Carter's legacy and explore Habitat for Humanity's impactful work in the Northern Flint Hills. Our conversation takes us through local community initiatives, upcoming events, and pioneering projects that aim to provide dignified housing for families in need.
• Discussion of Jimmy Carter's influence on community service
• Details about the Home is When the Heart Is Valentine's Gala
• Insights on the deconstruction of the former Commerce Bank building
• Overview of the Neighbors Helping Neighbors initiative during the snow crisis
• Exploration of Habitat’s future housing projects and modular construction plans
• Emphasis on the importance of community engagement and support
Philanthropy Today is brought to you by the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation. In this episode we feature a recently broadcast segment of the GMCF Community Hour as heard on NewsRadio KMAN. Back with segment number two of the GMCF Community Hour here on NewsRadio KMAN. Josh Brewer is joining us. Josh is the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Flint Hills. Is that of the Northern Flint Hills a new addendum to the name it is, it is.
Speaker 2:We would love to be Flint Hills, but Big Habitat pointed out, the Flint Hills are very tall and so we need to be very specific. That is, we are serving just the northern part of the Flint Hills.
Speaker 1:Very tall, as in long. Long, you know, from north to south of Kansas up to north of Kansas.
Speaker 2:Right right, they let us know that the Flint Hills do in fact go all the way to the Oklahoma border?
Speaker 1:What's your defining line to the south? So we serve Riley Pottawatomie.
Speaker 2:and then on a case-by-casecase we go into Geary County and Waubonsee, gotcha, okay, I don't know how many, how many counties are in the Flint Hills. There's quite a few, quite a few, and they wanted us to be a little bit more specific.
Speaker 1:Geographically speaking, yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I said, well, in Manhattan we do, we sort of claim the Flint Hills as ours, even though we are the northern part of the Flint Hills.
Speaker 1:Okay, so be it. Yeah, so that prepositional phrase. Nfh.
Speaker 2:HFH, NFH.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, HFH, NFH.
Speaker 2:My goodness, that's a lot of explanations. We don't use the acronym externally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say just habitat is pretty good for me. Yeah, yeah, habitat, Flint Hills. Well, there's been a lot of shine on Habitat here with the passing of former President Jimmy Carter and the work that he did to give that organization a strong foothold on a national basis. And have you seen reflection of that, of his passing impact you locally?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that there are a lot of people who were very personally motivated to contribute to Habitat in a volunteer capacity or financially, because of President Carter's leadership. I do have a letter from President Carter in my desk that he wrote to a minister in Westmoreland. The minister was working, he was volunteering on a habitat site. Actually I think he was over in Memphis and Jimmy Carter walked up and essentially the president former president said what are you looking at? We got to get to work and then afterwards he wrote a thank you note to all the other volunteers on the site and he had that letter and when he passed he sent it to our affiliate. So there's, there's a lot of people here that were motivated by, I think, that that form of servant leadership.
Speaker 2:Obviously, jimmy Carter was a person of faith and so I think a lot of people in the faith community think about you know what? What is that example? And and how he took his, his faith motivation and just got to work. People that worked with Jimmy Carter were he was a notorious taskmaster. His, his position was, if he was on the site I mean even in, I mean he's he continued to build houses into his the site. I mean even in, I mean he's.
Speaker 2:He continued to build houses into his, you know, into his 90s um and and they said, and even after his brain cancer uh diagnosis, he continued. He would, uh, even when he was no longer comfortable being mobile on the site, he would plop down in a chair and work on you know, the chair, the railings for the porch or build a mailbox. Both he and his wife, I think, were just really, really wonderful volunteers and supporters for Habitat. The Carter build is the biggest build every year and so different affiliates apply to host the Carter build, and Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood are now kind of the celebrity attraction at that build. But yeah, it's a huge, huge volunteer effort that's done every year in their honor.
Speaker 1:Well, he definitely left quite a legacy, not just you know in his public service, but in you know working within primarily Habitat.
Speaker 2:He did and you know he believed very much in the idea that everyone should have decency in housing and that people should have a dignified life. You know, when you think about the time that Carter worked I mean he as a young, early in his political career he spoke to issues of race and of class that were deeply uncomfortable for people in Georgia and he won on those platforms and I think that's something that people in political office today could look to is his courage.
Speaker 1:I think one of the comments that came from him and this is something that just kind of you know, was brought up after his passing the one statement is that he never lied. He said he never lied. And boy is that something that we could like to see back into the political world.
Speaker 2:I think there was a pretty famous interview that almost cost him the election.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:He was very honest for better or worse? Yeah, no. I think his courage, his honesty and his commitments to anti-poverty work were things that we should all be reflecting on, josh, let's talk a bit about some things.
Speaker 1:You got an event coming up. I'm excited to come this year.
Speaker 2:I actually had the.
Speaker 1:Friday night open to bring the friend, the lady friend, over and dance a little yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Home is when the Heart Is. That's our annual Valentine's Day gala. We are so lucky to have the Thundering Cats big band. They play a set and because that is dance music, we bring in the experts at the Ballroom Dance School of Manhattan. They remind us how to do a little swing dance. I certainly forget year to year.
Speaker 1:And then I'm like oh yeah, you got to practice these things, Josh.
Speaker 2:I do not have time to practice my swing step, but I break off the rust a little bit and then they let us loose with the big band and it is a lot of fun. And what I love is it's fun for the band members because they're like we get to look out and people are dancing to dance music and it's an opportunity to get dressed up. Food's always good and, yeah, it's an opportunity to get dressed up. Food's always good and yeah, it's all going to be down there at the Hilton Garden Inn 6 to 9 on February 14th.
Speaker 1:Okay. And we still got tickets for sale and attire is Formal.
Speaker 2:Attire is formal. Uh, which that word is I?
Speaker 1:I think a little hard that has a lot of flexibility okay, so let's say kansas formal how about?
Speaker 2:that. So dig out your necktie if you've got one um it'll be a bow tie dude yeah, if you want to rock a bow tie that's what I do, absolutely I wear.
Speaker 1:I wear bow ties mostly we. No one will be turned away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I personally appreciate when I am going to an event. I appreciate a suggested dress attire, Because otherwise I sit there and think about it and I'm like, well, do I wear this? Do I wear this? I'm like I just need a uniform.
Speaker 1:I ask everywhere I go, what am I supposed to wear? Yeah, so I put it on the card. I'm like there you go there, you are All right, good, and you can find out more at the website.
Speaker 2:HabitatFlynnHillsorg. If you want to buy a ticket, you can call us at the office or you can just drop in and we'll get you a ticket right there.
Speaker 1:So reach out to your friends Friday night. I mean, it's a, it's a date night that is completely handled, eleven nights away from Valentine's Day, and what a better way to, you know, share a little love.
Speaker 2:Valentine's Day, and what a better way to you know, share a little love. Absolutely, we celebrate love. We celebrate the building of the beloved community and, yeah, every year this event. It's a lot of fun Speaking of homes.
Speaker 1:This is what you do Now. You've got some things. You have a project right now that I was not aware of until we visited, just briefly before, the show pertaining to the former Commerce Bank building on points.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Commerce was kind enough when they decided to sell that building over to Hutton Development. We had a conversation with them about all the casework and the doors and the chandeliers and everything that was in there, and they've been supporters of Habitat. They know about our restore program. They weren't as familiar with our deconstruction program and so this is kind of a collaboration between restore and construction. The construction people carefully take things apart in a way that they can be reused in other projects and so they have spent the last week and a half down there taking everything apart, removing all this beautiful walnut trim.
Speaker 1:And so there's some nice woodwork there, gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous and we have sold most of the paneling.
Speaker 2:We had a sale on Saturday, so most of the paneling sold a ton of mid-century modern office furniture that was just really good condition. All four chandeliers were purchased by someone that's doing another cool project in the community, so we will see those chandeliers again. Excited about that, excited to keep them here local. And we still do have quite a few doors. Um, so if you're looking for a very solid door at a uh that really a great price, um, those will either be at the restore or we're possibly going to bring them over the builder auction next week as well. Builder auction yeah, uh, records doing the annual builders auction uh, need to need to learn a a little bit more and see if that's the type of thing that belongs there. I know they have doors, but it's been a fun project. It is very cold in that building. If you remember, we had a pretty good freeze there. It takes a while for a building of that size to unfreeze. Oh, so I was over there before this and I am thoroughly frozen.
Speaker 1:Good yeah, good yeah, good to know I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of concrete there, no kidding. And you know we talk about the freeze and you know think about how that affected your operations and people that are in the process of building when it's bitterly cold and you got all the the roadway issues, the snow, the ice that stacked up. You know, when you hear the city crews, you know moved so many millions of square yards of snow and ice from the streets and everything. Yeah, we as a project yeah, we did um.
Speaker 2:So when that hit, I think right away we realized this is a, you know, a slow moving disaster. People are snowed in. They're trapped in their houses. People are not necessarily prepared to move this much snow. Either they don't have the equipment they need or they're not physically able to remove that much snow.
Speaker 2:So we launched a Google sheet just called Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and started collecting information of people who needed support removing snow. And we know, you know, everybody knows somebody that lives, you know, in a general area. So we started connecting people that lived on the block who could help their neighbors dig out. I know our construction team. They addressed close to 50 houses themselves and I know there were over 100 people that had their information on that sheet that we got crossed off. So that was a that was very inspiring to see this community start responding. I think we learned a lot from that. We need to have a better disaster response network. That's something that we know. In the future, I would love to have a contact on every single block just so we know if someone needs help somewhere, there's a helper nearby. But yeah, there was a lot of snow that we dug out.
Speaker 1:No kidding. Well, let's talk a bit about other buildings. You've got some projects, and this is one of the key factors or key things that Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Flood Hills does, and that's build houses for people in need. So where is 2025 headed? What kind of direction?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have our new construction pipeline, we have a house that is framed in currently. That's going to be our first modular home and it is framed currently out by the airport and we are going to ship that to a site. The site is just a few miles down the road, but this is our first time attempting to move a modular home down the road.
Speaker 1:Does that give you some advantages to build a modular home for the future?
Speaker 2:It could and we kind of spoke to our region. Right, we have a lot of rural communities. We have a lot of people that live in between rural communities. Our approach to building bringing a lot of volunteers and our staff to a site every single day that model works in larger population centers. It doesn't really work in a rural area, and so there are some situations where you may need to send a home. So this is something we're testing to see if this is feasible.
Speaker 2:You know this home has been built right there. This is a partnership with K-State 105 because they also want to work on housing this year, and so we know that rural communities across the state need housing and we're going to need to be able to send housing units. So, yeah, we're building it there out by the airport. It's the first time we've used modular building. It's the first time we've used hempcrete. So we bought some hemp from the Potawatomi Nation north of Topeka and brought it over here, mixed up the hempcrete, and so that insulation is in place. Currently it's cured and we will move that whole unit over to a lot in Ogden and it will be placed on some piers there and then it'll be ready to be finished on site.
Speaker 1:What are some of the new challenges that you face in building a modular home and moving up?
Speaker 2:Transport. That's the biggest one, and so you know, if you think about manufactured housing, it is manufactured to specific dimensions and so they have very, very specific transport for those homes. For us we don't necessarily have that industry here. You go over to Colorado. There's a few different modular home manufacturers and so they have dedicated transport and logistics operations there. So we are, we are still reaching out to companies to see if is there a local solution so that we don't have to bring someone out of Colorado to move a home five miles down the road.
Speaker 2:I think that's the biggest one, I mean. The other one is just precision. If you are building a home that has to be placed on piers at a certain pattern, I mean that's an engineered load path, so those I mean everything has to be placed within a tolerance of about an eighth of an inch, and that's not something that's typical in residential construction. And so we're really bringing a different level of performance so that we can, you know, so that we can be reliable and saying absolutely that house is going to fit on those peers, and just linking all that up.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you got your work cut out for you.
Speaker 2:I have a really good team that helps me with that and we've got a great partnership with K-State and MATC, and so we have a lot of trust between us that yeah, we certainly put some ambitious goals out there and so far we've hit them.
Speaker 1:How many more houses do you plan for? 25?
Speaker 2:25,. We'll have that one done this summer and then we will start in the fall. We will start another three bed, two bath. That'll be the third home of our cottage cluster across from.
Speaker 1:Ogden Elementary. Okay, well, we need to move on, but, man, this has been fun to talk about. You know former President Carter, and so the neat things that you've got going. The Homeware is when the Heart Is. Event is coming up February 14th, valentine's Day. Habitatflinthillsorg is where you can get your tickets.
Speaker 2:That's where you can get them, or just pop in the office. We'd be happy to see you.
Speaker 1:Josh, we're always good, good time to have you and thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Dave.
Speaker 1:We're going to be talking about the Child Care Business Initiative next with Lisa Sederlin-Isaacson. She's the executive director. Vern can't stay out of the studio for too long, so I think he's going to jump in too. We'll be back with more on the GMCF Community Hour here.