Issue date: April 08, 1998
By JULIE RAWE and ANDREA GEMMET
This summer, scores of volunteers equipped with hammers, power saws and hands-on social activism will transform two vacant mini-parks into home sites for very low-income families in the Belle Haven neighborhood in east Menlo Park.
Habitat for Humanity, a national organization dedicated to building low-income housing with volunteer labor, is scheduled to begin its first project in Menlo Park this May, said Mark Moulton, executive director of the group's Peninsula chapter. The chapter, which is based in Menlo Park, has built 33 homes in East Palo Alto since 1989, Mr. Moulton said.
Habitat will build two single-family houses on the former mini-parks that have been home to drug dealers, gangs and transients, according to Belle Haven residents. The Menlo Park City Council March 31 unanimously approved rezoning the empty lots, each spanning roughly one seventh of an acre, that were designated as open space in the 1960s to provide a place where children could play.
The city is pursuing plans to build a large neighborhood park in Belle Haven at Chilco Street and Hamilton Avenue, said City Manager Jan Dolan.
Habitat's plans called for building two four-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot houses intended exclusively for larger families, but after hearing pleas to consider the needs of smaller families, the City Council stipulated that one of the houses should have only three bedrooms.
"Smaller families need homes as well," said Mazzetta Oliver, a Menlo Park resident and mother of two.
The homes will be built mainly by volunteers, who are supervised by professionals, Mr. Moulton said. In exchange for a down payment, the home's purchaser is required to give 500 hours of "sweat equity" by working to build the house. The remainder of the house's cost is paid to Habitat for Humanity in the form of a no-interest mortgage, he said.
The houses will be sold to very low-income families, which Mr. Moulton described as having an annual income of less than 50 percent of median. "That's under $32,000 for a family of four," he said.
Under the agreement adopted by the City Council, the homes must remain low-income housing and cannot be sold for market-rate prices for 55 years.
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