Rebuilding Together announces which homes will benefit from home improvement program

Rebuilding Together announced Tuesday which South Bend neighborhoods will benefit from their home improvement program.

Rebuilding Together is a program aimed at helping homeowners at no cost.

“It’s a partnership between the City of South Bend, Building Trades, University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College. Volunteers come together and make much needed improvements to the homes of the elderly, disabled, and veterans,” said Marco Mariani, Executive Director of Rebuilding Together.

They just announced the neighborhood they’ll focus on this year.

“The area we’ve selected is essentially the area around the southeast neighborhood, Ewing Street, Miami, Michigan, so a fairly large area,” said Mariani.

This isn’t their first time around the block.

“This is our 28th year for Rebuilding together so we’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve helped 800 homeowners over our 28 years. The message we are really trying to send is that housing still matters. If you have a roof that's leaking or a furnace that's going out, we need to really prioritize those health and safety repairs,” said Mariani.

The team isn’t looking to stop here, either.

“Our goal is to serve anywhere from 15-20 homeowners every year. We go through and extensive review process, there’s an application process for all of the homeowners,” said Mariani. 

For those who receive the application for the program, you’re encouraged to attend one of their upcoming sessions.

“At our informational sessions we’ll have a representative there to answer questions about the application, to help you pull your documentation together so these are sessions that are intended to help the applicant,” said Mariani.

If you received that packet and are interested in having your home improved, the information sessions are below:

The first session will be from Tuesday, September 20, 2016 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. SJCPL Tutt Branch.

The second session will be Thursday, September 29, 2016 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m at the  SJCPL Centre Branch.

The third session will be Saturday, October 8, 2016 from 11:00 – 12:30 p.m. at the Tutt Branch.