West Des Moines Volunteers Build Garage for Habitat for Humanity Home

A crew of West Des Moines volunteers are building a garage at 124 First Street as the first step in the construction of a Habitat for Humanity project to build a house on a Valley Junction lot the city has owned since the devastating Floods of 1993.

The house won’t be built until 2013. The garage is being constructed so the property will remain in compliance with a city ordinance that requires garages on all residential developments. However, Habitat for Humanity doesn’t build garages.

So the West Des Moines City Council last year authorized up to $15,000 to contract out the work – a move opposed by First Ward Councilman Kevin Trevillyan, in whose district the lot is located.

He favored waiving the requirement that one and one-half car garages be included in new construction plans, which the council opposed. Trevillyan said that for the government to finance construction of a garage for an individual was "not a good use of taxpayer money,” so he asked the council to give him the go-ahead to organize a volunteer crew to do the work.

At worst, he thought, the city would have to pay for the materials, but a Home Depot Foundation Grant for $2,800 covered those costs. at 3700 University Ave. even sold the materials at cost, Trevillyan said.

Other donations were made by and Concrete Technology Inc.

Within two days of the email going out to city workers asking for volunteers to do the construction Trevillyan had a full crew.

“It’s worked out great,” Trevillyan said. “I knew going in that I wasn’t going to have any trouble getting people to donate their labor. We have a generous employee base willing to do whatever’s needed.”

Over the past two weekends, the volunteers have poured concrete and framed the walls. On Saturday, they’ll go back to work at 8 a.m. to finish the job, Trevillyan said.

The project was delayed from spring until fall, so some of the volunteers changed, but Trevillyan thinks about 40 people – employees and their spouses, friends and children – will have been involved from start-to-finish.

Trevillyan thinks the project provides a good model of how the city can accomplish projects off the taxpayer dole.

“How can we do things better than just throwing money at it?” he said. “We need to think differently.”