Twenty years later, Habitat for Humanity has surged past modest early expectations

This was perhaps the one public occasion when former Lynchburg Mayor Jimmie Bryan was guilty of not being optimistic enough.

After he helped celebrate the groundbreaking of the city’s first Habitat house with a stab of his gold-plated ceremonial shovel on Dec. 1, 1988, Bryan (known for his cheery pronouncement, “It’s great to be alive and living in Lynchburg, Virginia”) told onlookers: “Let’s get behind this. Let’s build 20 houses.”

Little did he know. Just over two decades later, the Greater Lynchburg Habitat chapter has surged far beyond Bryan’s expectations — 270 completed dwellings, including two Habitat subdivisions.

This output, amazing for a city of roughly 60,000, earned Lynchburg national recognition as one of the most prolific Habitat chapters in the country. The presence of the Bright Star and Jubilee Heights clusters off Florida Avenue have helped transform the White Rock Hill neighborhood, and the Habitat flame has now been passed to all of the surrounding counties.

“When we started out,” first Habitat director Kevin Campbell once said, “we had to submit documents to Habitat about what we planned to do. I remember writing down that we were planning to build one house the first year and two houses a year after that.”

Somehow, that first 1989 house turned into five, and eight more went up in 1990. Something about the program plucked a chord in Lynchburg, which has always been known for its volunteerism. Churches and colleges responded with free labor; contractors and tradesmen fell over each other offering supplies and skilled labor at cost or below.

“It was the right thing at the right place at the right time,” said Campbell, who now works at the national Habitat headquarters in Americus, Ga. “I remember one contractor, Wayne Corley, helping us with a house and saying, ‘This is easy.”

Indeed, Habitat is easy to like. The homeowners must have a job, and are required to put in 500 “sweat equity” hours as a family toward construction. It’s not a handout, and applicants are carefully screened.

Still, there were doubters in 1989. Even with low monthly payments, said the pessimists, a lot of the homeowners (many of them single parents) would fall behind and have to be foreclosed upon. The houses, many of them put together almost overnight in “blitz builds” with the aid of unskilled labor, would fall apart in a decade.

Wrong, says Debra Silverman, and wrong.

“The default rate over the last 20 years is less than two percent,” said the current Habitat director, “and in most cases, there were good reasons for the problem. As for the houses, they’ve held up very well.”

Just ask Ricky Harris, who moved into his Habitat house in Jubilee Heights seven years ago, as its second owner.

“It was in good shape when I moved in,” he said. “It was fine.”

The first homeowner to benefit from the local chapter was Stella Culpepper, 29 years old and an aide at the Central Virginia Training Center at the time. She had two children, Wesley and Robert, who were highly excited about getting a backyard. Her house on Virginia Street cost around $25,000 to build in 1989, and her payments were set up at $180 a month.

Silverman estimates that more than 50,000 volunteers have put in more than 300,000 volunteer hours since work began on Culpepper’s house. The group also has a backlog of 30 donated lots.

All that progress was discussed and savored recently at the retrospective.

For the past year, Habitat has been celebrating its 20th anniversary, culminating in a barbecue lunch and retrospective program Sept. 26 at the organization’s year-old headquarters on Alleghany Avenue.

That physical transformation speaks volumes about the group’s progress. Formerly, Habitat had its headquarters in a small house on Virginia Street once owned by neighborhood activist Matty Thornhill. Now, as the occupant of a former car dealership at the corner of Alleghany and Lakeside, it has plenty of room for both the administrative offices and the 14,000-square-foot ReStore, plus adequate parking.

“It’s like night and day,” said ReStoremanager Barbara Goff.

In the process, the eight-year-old ReStore — moved from Bedford Avenue — has grown beyond its original function as a Habitat warehouse and become a popular stop for Central Virginians seeking bargains in building supplies or furniture.

“We get a lot of donations,” Goff said, “and a lot of it gets sold. Also, when you think about it, we’ve kept about 1,700 tons of solid waste out of the city landfill since we started.”

Meanwhile, the frenzied building growth of the first 10 years eventually leveled off.

“It’s not something you can sustain forever,” Silverman said. “For one thing, a lot of contractors have gotten to the point where they’ve already done a lot for us and are ready to do other things. It’s getting harder to find usable land in Lynchburg. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop building, just slow down a little.”

The local group has done some rehabilitation work, but its emphasis remains on affordable, no-frills, single-family houses, built from scratch. Built, in recent years, by crews made up completely of women, college students, and people with disabilities. Built in a weekend, or even a day.

Lynchburg contractor Tom Gerdy, a long-time Habitat volunteer and supporter, has joined Larry Owen and Chuck Doremus to form a group of volunteers that travels to other cities around the country for weekend blitz builds.

Last month at the barbecue, Gail Nowlin stepped up to the microphone, looked out at the audience, and said: “Probably two-thirds of the volunteers here worked on my home.”

That was No. 31, and Nowlin later went to work for Habitat as family services coordinator.

“It was a blessing then,” she said of her house, “and it’s a blessing now.”