Habitat for Humanity Castle Country is a non-profit Christian housing ministry that builds low-income housing for people in need regardless of race or religion. The program is always looking for individuals/civic groups to volunteer with ongoing projects in both Carbon and Emery Counties.

Katie Anderson, AmeriCorp VISTA worker spoke about the program, “We’re with Habitat for Humanity Castle Country, we serve both Carbon and Emery County, we’ve been around since 1989. My responsibilities for Habitat are to find funding, so we just submitted a bunch of grants this past June.” Completed homes thus far can be found in Helper, Green River, Orangeville, Wellington, Castle Dale with the newest construction to be built on a lot in the Price area.

There is a home in Emery County that was completed back in December 2010 but the original Habitat partner family unfortunately had to move. “We have a home currently available in Castle Dale, a three bedroom, two bathrooms. We are looking to get a family in there and currently accepting applications. Most of our board members actually helped build the house alongside volunteers,” said Anderson. The new eligible family would be looking at $500.00 to $600.00 payments per month plus would be required to put in a minimum of 500 hours of “sweat equity” into the beatification of the home.

Maggie Cochrane, Construction Intern explains another program through Habitat that is geared towards existing homeowners, “It’s called A Brush with Kindness and it focuses on exterior home repair, minor exterior home repair. So we help low income, disabled, veteran, family or households repair things like their roofs, or help them do yard work, paint their house. We actually got a large donation of paint so we are really looking forward to getting some painting project applications in the future.” Staff members and volunteers work together with the homeowner to eliminate substandard, inadequate and/or unhealthy living conditions.

“The way it works is that we pay the cost upfront for labor and materials and they pay it back over time as they choose, whether that’s a year or two years, it can be anywhere from $15.00 to $50.00 a month depending on the scope of the project,” said Cochrane. The homeowners’ eligibility is based on their need, ability to pay and willingness to partner with Habitat.

To learn more about Habitat for Humanity of Castle Country visit their website at http://habitatcastlecountry.org/ or contact the office at (435) 637-9701.