Heart of Iowa Habitat for Humanity is doing something they haven’t done in Greene County in a decade, which is build a new home from the ground up.

Associate Director Jeff Lamoureux says the affiliate and main boards of the organization have approved building a new home in Greene County for 2019. Since the last time that Habitat built a new home in Greene County, Lamoureux says they’ve done Helping Hands projects, where volunteers make exterior repairs to existing homes. He describes two important criteria for anyone interested in applying for Habitat to build them a home.

“There’s income guideline requirements. It’s actually the same as the Helping Hands, 30 to 60-percent of mean family income, depending on your family size. The other aspect is if selected there is the idea of sweat-equity, 300 hours of sweat-equity hours. It’s kind of based on the size of the family, if it’s a two-parent home or one(parent). But roughly 300 hours.”

Lamoureux points out that since Greene County is affiliated with Boone and Guthrie counties, Habitat only requires at least one new home to be built every three years within an affiliated Habitat organization. Lamoureux notes that Boone County has fulfilled that requirement in the past and that board chose to switch from building new homes to Helping Hands projects next year.

Anyone interested in learning more about applying for Habitat to build a new home in the Greene County area can contact Lamoureux at 386-3093 or email him at ad@heartofiowahabitat.org. You can also check out their website at heartofiowahabitat.org.