New Hope and Old Concerns
Today we began work at a home about three miles from Camp Hope. The family lives on the property in a FEMA trailer. We weren’t able to meet the family but hope to tomorrow. 
The first picture shows our team getting briefed by the Habitat for Humanity (HFH) site supervisor at the house. We split up into several teams: two teams worked on siding, one team worked on caulking, and a couple of teams worked inside the house. 
They were hoping the house would be completed by November 1st, but they are behind schedule and it won’t be ready by then.
After we finished for the day at the house, most of us went up to Gentilly to Fran’s and Fred’s house on Riveria Street that we gutted last year. The devastation from the Hurricane was evident on the drive. You would see shopping centers that are abandoned and littered with debris, houses that are still uninhabitable, businesses that are closed intermixed with new stores, new businesses, and signs of life.
But as we approached Fred’s and Fran’s neighborhood, my heart began to sink. Things didn’t seem all that different from 13 months ago when we were here. The road was still a mess filled with large potholes and broken asphalt. When we turned down
Riveria Street the neighborhood was still like a ghost town. It looked virtually the same, as a matter of fact, except that someone was working on Fred’s and Fran’s house. The orange house is theirs. So I was at first excited to see the progress and realize that all of our work had not gone for nothing. But then as we all looked around the neighborhood, there was not one other house on the street that had been or was in t he process of being refurbished. We walked into the house next door, and literally everything was the same. The destroyed grand piano still lay on the first floor like a skeleton. We walked upstairs and all of the clothes, books, computers, were still scattered all over the floors. There were still toiletries in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. It was eerie… For those of us who had worked their last year it was quite an emotional experience.
The first picture shows our team getting briefed by the Habitat for Humanity (HFH) site supervisor at the house. We split up into several teams: two teams worked on siding, one team worked on caulking, and a couple of teams worked inside the house. 
They were hoping the house would be completed by November 1st, but they are behind schedule and it won’t be ready by then.
After we finished for the day at the house, most of us went up to Gentilly to Fran’s and Fred’s house on Riveria Street that we gutted last year. The devastation from the Hurricane was evident on the drive. You would see shopping centers that are abandoned and littered with debris, houses that are still uninhabitable, businesses that are closed intermixed with new stores, new businesses, and signs of life.But as we approached Fred’s and Fran’s neighborhood, my heart began to sink. Things didn’t seem all that different from 13 months ago when we were here. The road was still a mess filled with large potholes and broken asphalt. When we turned down
Riveria Street the neighborhood was still like a ghost town. It looked virtually the same, as a matter of fact, except that someone was working on Fred’s and Fran’s house. The orange house is theirs. So I was at first excited to see the progress and realize that all of our work had not gone for nothing. But then as we all looked around the neighborhood, there was not one other house on the street that had been or was in t he process of being refurbished. We walked into the house next door, and literally everything was the same. The destroyed grand piano still lay on the first floor like a skeleton. We walked upstairs and all of the clothes, books, computers, were still scattered all over the floors. There were still toiletries in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. It was eerie… For those of us who had worked their last year it was quite an emotional experience.
posted by UCC Medfield at 8:55 PM
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