Rebuilding Together Comes Roaring Back
Rebuilding Together Comes Roaring Back
This Saturday marks the first big work day for Rebuilding Together Sebastopol since 2019
Former mayor Patrick Slayter may have retired from Sebastopol politics, but he’s still committed to improving the community.
Slayter, an architect, is president of the local affiliate of Rebuilding Together, a national organization dedicated to repairing and revitalizing homes.
Slayter has belonged to Rebuilding Together since he was in college, and he (together with a handful of other local volunteers) started the local Rebuilding Together Sebastopol group back in 2004.
“Since our first workday in April of 2005, we have revitalized numerous homes with the support of our generous, dedicated community and plan to do so for years to come,” Slayter said.
Rebuilding Together Sebastopol schedules just one work-day a year. And this year, that’s this Saturday, May 6. This is their first work day since the pandemic began, though they’ve funded emergency repair jobs locally over the intervening years.
Volunteers for Rebuilding Together don’t do major renovations—just things that can be done in a single day.
“Mostly it's handyman stuff,” Slayter said, “like rebuilding stairs, patching roofs, landscaping, and cleaning up. We gear up and we try to roll through as many of these kinds of projects as we can in one day.”
How do they find houses in need of repair?
According to Slayter, the group takes applications from local homeowners who they find mostly through referrals from neighborhood associations, churches or service groups.
Rebuilding Together Sebastopol’s website put it this way: “Many of our neighbors have worked all their lives and have been physically and financially able to maintain their homes in good condition. Now due to illness, the loss of a spouse, aging, and/or economic hardships, they are unable to do repair work themselves, and their homes become unsafe or deteriorate.”
This year, the majority of Rebuilding Together’s repair projects will take place at Fircrest Mobile Home Park, thanks to the efforts of the indefatigable Marilyn Madrone, one of the park’s residents.
Madrone and a friend went door-to-door in her mobile home park, telling neighbors about the program, and several people applied.
“I wanted to help my neighbors to realize this is an opportunity that our community is doing for us to help us to be able to age in our homes in a better way,” Madrone said. “Some of us live in quite old homes, like mine is more than 50 years old and might be one of the oldest in the park. But other homes are 30 years old and 40 years old and it takes a toll on your roof and your foundation. You get dry rot. I'm going to have two spots of dry rot repaired and some electrical work done. Other people are having foundation work or lattice work, and they're even having some painting done.”
Rebuilding Together volunteers are scheduled to work on nine mobile homes in the park. Another group of Rebuilding Together volunteers—mostly from the local VFW—will be working at another house elsewhere in the community.
Getting ready for the big day
Even though all the work takes place on one day, it takes a long time to pull everything together. It’s not only a matter of recruiting and scheduling the volunteers and matching skills to the projects at hand, Slayter and his fellow organizers also have to make sure that all the materials are available and onsite when the volunteers arrive.
Sometimes, as anyone who’s done home repair knows, it’s not obvious what you need until you get into a project. That’s why Slayter appoints some volunteers to be runners; their job is to run back and forth between job sites and the hardware store.
“We've got a great partnership with Sebastopol Hardware,” Slayter said. “They're always very generous with donations, as well as a discount for anything beyond the donation. They've been a supporter every single year.”
In addition, he said, “Rebuilding Together nationally has a really strong relationship with Lowe's. And they're very, very generous every year with their community benefit grant program. So we're able to get a lot of our materials at Lowe's that we can’t get closer to home. We also have a relationship with Friedman's, and they've been generous with fairly significant discounts over the years.”
Who are the volunteers?
Slayter said their volunteers are drawn from all walks of life but that Rebuilding Together Sebastopol is lucky to have a lot of skilled tradespeople associated with the project—though they’re always looking for more.
“We've got quite a few general contractors on our board, which is fantastic and a really unique thing. Honestly, other affiliates are quite envious of us for that. So those people are able to call in their subcontractors—skilled tradespeople that they work with day in and day out on their day job.”
“Still, we're always looking for more skilled tradespeople as volunteers: carpenters, electricians, plumbers, roofers,” he said, noting that skilled amateurs are welcome as well.
The Rebuilding Together team will have some extra volunteers this year from American Dream TV, which is going to be filming a segment on Rebuilding Together. That segment will be hosted by local realtor Milli Cannata.
Slayter gave a shout out to the various groups that will be providing volunteers for this year’s work day, including “the Lions Club, Rotary, the North Bay Association of Realtors, VFW, as well as Rebuilding Together Board members, at least one city council member and a Fifth District supervisor.”
He said there’s still time to volunteer for the Rebuilding Together event this Saturday.
“Just show up at Ives Park between 7 am and 7:30 am on Saturday. Or just go online to www.rtsebastopol.org and fill out a volunteer form and then join us at Ives Park.”
For more information about Rebuilding Together Sebastopol, see rtsebastopol.org.