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Jonah Sniffen looks around his childhood property and dreams. “We have a big yard now, and we’re going to extend later,” he says, gesturing at the house, a new, five-bedroom home sitting next to a large expanse of lawn in Waimanalo.
Sniffen and his five children can think big these days, thanks to the Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, the affordable-housing organization that helps property owners build their own homes. Their new home was built this spring, just as the COVID-19 crisis hit, in record time, showing that not even the pandemic could keep Habitat down. In fact, the organization appears to be emerging from the pandemic stronger and better for the experience, said Executive Director Jim Murphy.
“Initially, everybody was saying, ‘We can’t wait until everything gets back to normal,’ ” Murphy said. “Then everyone started to realize that things aren’t ever going to get back to normal, normal doesn’t exist anymore. So we took the approach that now we get to create our new normal.”
For four generations, the Sniffen family has occupied their plot of Hawaiian homestead land. A three-bedroom house stood there, built in “the ’30s or ’40s. … It was kind of old, kind of falling down,” said Sniffen, a worker with the city Department of Environmental Services.
About four years ago, Sniffen began working with Habitat on plans for a new home at the site, learning about the planning and permitting process. He moved his family out of the old home to a nearby rental two years ago to begin preparing for new construction.
The project had gotten only as far as demolition when the pandemic hit. Habitat had to stop much of its administrative operations for about six weeks, shutting down its Kalihi office and the accompanying ReStore, where it sells donated building materials. The store has since reopened.
“Through it all, we kept building,” Murphy said. “We didn’t have volunteers out there, so that was really the big difference, but we did have some very generous donations of time and talent from a couple of contractors. … It kind of kept us going and kept our mission going forward.”
Providing a major boost for the project was Chris Lee and his construction company Ayko Group LLC. In normal times, Ayko specializes in commercial and military projects.
Lee, a former officer with the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, is a strong believer in volunteering. He did volunteer work while attending ‘Iolani School and for his daughter’s school camp, as well as during his stint with the Navy. “I think it’s a good thing for the community and our society to help one another,” he said.
Early on in the pandemic, Lee was able to get Cares Act money to pay his workers, but COVID-19 put a hold on the projects they were working on. So he got on the internet and found Honolulu Habitat for Humanity needed help.
“I saw it as a noble cause,” Lee said. “If we’re going to collect that money, let’s help others in need, whether it’s food drives or whatever.”
Lee eventually had seven of his tradespeople working on-site, along with himself, a couple of office staff and a project manager. “It was great to see, because we went from slab to finished building in probably two, three weeks,” he said.
Prior to the coronavirus crisis, it often took months for Habitat to finish construction of a house, since it relied mostly on volunteer laborers with varying degrees of experience and knowledge in construction, Murphy said.
“You get volunteers who will come out and don’t know a thing about construction, sometimes you get people with a construction background,” he said.
Working with Ayko has enabled Habitat to streamline and restructure its processes, Murphy said, calling the Sniffens’ home “literally the house COVID built.”
From now on, rather than using almost exclusively volunteer labor, Habitat plans to use skilled contractors for things like the foundation and roofing, while relying on its volunteer labor force for drywall, painting and installing floors and cabinets, Murphy said.
The organization is now entering its most ambitious home-building phase yet, with six more homes scheduled for completion by next June. “The downtime actually allowed our director of construction to do a lot of planning in preparation for our next homes,” Murphy said.
Sniffen has a daughter and four sons, and all of them, along with other members of the family, helped with the construction of the home by performing tasks such as painting and drywalling. “We tried to get things done fast,” Sniffen said. “Because of COVID-19, they couldn’t bring in too many volunteers. So we were just working with the contractors.”
Even though the home was completed in record time, it took several weeks for the city to give the Sniffens final permission to occupy the property. But a recent visit revealed that they’re settled in comfortably, having converted the living room into a small studio where they hold online services for their church.
The property is one of the first homestead sites in Waimanalo, said Sniffen’s daughter, Jasmine, a secretary at the nearby Hawaii Job Corps Center. Although the current structure is new, “there’s a lot of memories in this house,” said Jasmine, who will be living at the house with her new husband, Isaako Kawai-Aweau.
Standing in the studio/living room, she closes her eyes, strums her ukulele and sings a lovely song in her sweet voice. The song is “Hanalai Moon,” but the sentiment behind it is “home, sweet home.”
Moving in “felt so good,” she said. “To see something new like this for the next generation, or perhaps my kids, it’s so cool that the generations will have a place to call home.”
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HONOLULU HABITAT FOR HUMANITY
>> Where: 922 Austin Lane
>> Contact: Administrative office, info@honolulu habitat.org or 538-7070
>> ReStore contact: restore@ honolulu habitat.org or 380-8617
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