YouthBuild makes dream of homownership come true

By the time the Community Development Corp. of Brownsville's YouthBuild program is finished, Mer-ary Rios and her family will have the home of their dreams.

The development corporation will have the model "green home" for 80 such structures to be built in Cameron County using environmentally friendly materials and building methods.

And Eduardo Sanchez and Octavio Camacho Jr. will have the memories of a lifetime.

On March 17, Sanchez and Camacho were among about 150 YouthBuild students from across the nation who traveled to Washington, D.C., for YouthBuild USA's 30th anniversary celebration. The festivities included four days of leadership training and a Green Academy on the National Mall that focused on green building, green collar jobs, energy responsibility and environmental awareness.

On the National Mall, academy participants built the exterior and interior walls for a green home that will be donated to Rios and her family. Before they took the walls down, they showed the structure to national leaders including U.S. congressmen, senators and first lady Michelle Obama.

"It was awesome," Camacho, who has since finished the YouthBuild program, said of meeting Obama and showing her how the green initiatives utilized in the house will save energy, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help save the Earth's environment.

Sanchez said he was awed by the whole experience.

"If you had told me a few years back that I would be going to Washington, D.C., to build a green tech-nology house, I wouldn't have believed it," he said. Sanchez guided U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, and his Brownsville liaison, Denise Blanchard, on a tour of the house.

YouthBuild USA is a national program in which low-income students, who have left school, work to ob-tain their high school diplomas or general education equivalent while training in home construction and technology. In Cameron County the program is run through the Community Development Corp. of Brownsville.

Participants receive stipends for the work they perform rehabilitating and building affordable housing for low-income families. CDCB's mission is to assist low-income families in attaining homeownership. Through below-market financing, efficient home designs and targeted outreach, CDCB is able to provide safe, sanitary and affordable owner-occupied housing for people earning as little as $10,000 per year, said Nick Mitchell, the agency's executive director.

The green technology walls that were built on the National Mall were shipped to Brownsville after the event. When they arrived last week, they were taken to a building site 4½ miles east of the Los Indios Bridge on U.S. Highway 281.There they will become the framework of a dream home for Rios and her family, whose trailer home was all but destroyed by Hurricane Dolly. The family has been living in the trailer's one remaining habitable room since the hurricane hit last summer, said Greg Flores, CDCB YouthBuild program director.

Flores said the green home will be donated to Rios, a single working mother of three girls, through Federal Emergency Management Agency grants. Construction is expected to be finished in June, he said.

"You cannot imagine how this will change our lives after living through moments of anguish and des-peration over our living conditions," Rios wrote in a letter expressing her gratitude.

"This project is not only providing me with shelter for my children, it is giving us a home - a palace. A parent's dream is to be able to provide their children with a safe and comfortable place where they may start to write their own history while creating memories. This project is allowing me to fulfill this dream," she wrote.

Sanchez entered YouthBuild in October and will finish next month. He obtained his GED three weeks ago. He plans to enter The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and eventu-ally become a civil engineer.

"People say that young people out of school are the problem. In YouthBuild, they're part of the solu-tion," Flores said, adding that the program simultaneously addresses core issues facing low-income communities - housing, education, employment, crime prevention and leadership development.

YouthBuild is funded as a federal program under the U.S. Department of Labor. In Brownsville, it is at 815 Arthur St. at the corner of Arthur and McDavitt Boulevard.

You can follow the green home's progress at www.cdcbgreenhome.com.