UNC's Habitat for Humanity to reach goal of building 10 homes this year

UNC's Habitat for Humanity organization started the 2016-17 year with the ambitious plan to build 10 houses by the end of the spring semester — and they are on track to meet their goal.

“We will be able to meet our goal, but we still need a lot of support,” said Matthew Coleman, co-chairperson of the organization.

He said it is looking like they will be able to accomplish the challenge they set for themselves and finish building all 10 of the homes as planned.

“Orange County is about to finish up the five houses from the first semester, so everything is on track pretty well," Coleman said. 

Sarah Renfro, co-chairperson of the club, said the group has approval for the land to complete nine houses now, but they're working on getting the tenth. 

“I think that the 10 houses will happen, we’re actually waiting on a plot of land for the 10th house," Renfro said. 

She said whether they get the land is out of the hands of the UNC chapter — it is mainly something Orange County's Habitat for Humanity organization is dealing with.

“Right now, we’re building in the Northside community, which is right behind Franklin Street, and Orange County, the affiliated office, select the families that will get the homes,” Coleman said.

Coleman said the families have to go through an application process beforehand. 

“The home we’re working on this semester will be for a family where the father works for UNC housing as a janitor," Coleman said.

Coleman and Renfro said the organization does a lot of fundraising activities throughout the year to get the money that covers the costs of the builds. 

“Recently, we had our Mixed Concrete art auction, which raised almost $11,000 dollars,” Coleman said. 

They also had benefit nights and bake sales. 

“We did a fundraising bake sale that happened the day (Barack) Obama was here and we ended up making so much money because we just walked down the line that was over a mile long, selling baked goods basically, and raised some money in that way.” Renfro said.

Renfro said they are doing some innovative fundraising pushes that they haven’t tried in the past — like Carolina Blueprint, a shack-a-thon event in April that's expected to be the biggest fundraiser of the year for the club. 

“Carolina Blueprint is a fundraising event where we’re getting clubs and organizations on campus to build, live in and fundraise out of a shack,” Renfro said.

Mark Peifer, the faculty adviser of the club, said he has always been impressed with Habitat's work, both globally and in the community. 

“Habitat is just awesome, right, I mean, you know finding out that, you know, pretty much every year for the last many years ... a group of students are raising that much money is pretty impressive,” Peifer said.

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