Habitat World Online

Volunteer construction supervisor Doc Smith works with AmeriCorps member Wes Gautreaux in southwest Louisiana.

Going the Distance in the Gulf
Two years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Habitat for Humanity marks hurricane-recovery milestones and forges ahead with rebuilding efforts.

By Kathryn Reid

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project 2008

It's been two full years since the world first began to respond to the twin furies of Katrina and Rita, months full of hard lessons and hard work. Scenes of destruction and despair have been replaced by scenes of renaissance and hope. A flood of Habitat for Humanity volunteers, donations and support has reached into cut-off communities, slowly restoring a sense of normal life for families all along the Gulf Coast who still find themselves starting over.

So much already has been done in so many places, and yet there is always more to do. "Gulf Coast recovery is a marathon, not a sprint," Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, told volunteers who had come to help the affiliate raise the walls on the 1,000th and 1,001st hurricane recovery houses in May. Most of his listeners were fellow marathoners--homeowners, volunteers, Habitat leadership and staff, and board members and partners of affiliates in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

Today, the area still struggles with the social, economic and environmental effects of the storms. For many families, the storms aren't things of the past at all, but challenges to be faced anew every day. There is hope, however, in the long haul. Opportunities for homeownership and affordable housing are a linchpin to the recovery, and that's the reason Habitat volunteers and partners, like the ones profiled below, are focused on the next 1,000 houses and beyond.

Wes Gautreaux returned home to south Louisiana to help with hurricane recovery.

A volunteer comes home to help
Wes Gautreaux grew up along the bayous of south Louisiana, but had relocated to the skyscrapers of New York City for a job in finance by the time the storms struck. He saw the battered state of his home state and got involved.

"I wanted to do something to help," says Gautreaux. Within days after Hurricane Katrina, he was framing Habitat houses in Rockefeller Plaza. He also volunteered with the Red Cross and was deeply affected by the stories he heard from evacuees. He knew he had to do more, and Habitat for Humanity was on his mind.

"My wife Jenny and I had planned to someday volunteer for a year, maybe in another country, to help people in need," he says. "After what happened with Katrina, we decided the time was now and the place was south Louisiana, our home."

Gautreaux applied to AmeriCorps, a sort of domestic Peace Corps, and hoped to serve in New Orleans. But before his assignment came through, another hurricane struck. Rita flattened Delcambre, his wife's hometown in southwest Louisiana. Gautreaux switched his application to indicate a preference for Iberia Habitat for Humanity, a little affiliate in need of some new energy and enthusiasm.

And so Gautreaux came home to join the rebuilding effort, not knowing that the tools he'd find most useful were the customer service and client management tools he had used in the finance world. With a strong work ethic, boundless enthusiasm and varied skills, Gautreaux began to work on board recruitment and development, public relations, volunteer management, and house sponsorships. "Wes has been here seven months, and it's amazing what he's achieved in that time," says volunteer construction supervisor Doc Smith. "We have a nine-member board now; Wes deserves credit for that." The industrious Gautreaux also has recruited for administration and construction help and contacted major employers in the area to share information about Habitat's opportunities for homeownership. One of the new board members is leading plans for a fall fund-raiser that will help the organization extend its reach and the depth of its grassroots support.

On Saturdays, Gautreaux joins volunteers to build with a local homeowner who's lived in a FEMA trailer since Hurricane Rita. And in May, Gautreaux joined more than 500 fellow AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps alums in Gulfport, Miss. They came from all over America--including Alaska and Hawaii--to blitz build 20 houses with Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. For many, it was the culmination of a year of service with hurricane-affected families whose need for housing is stark and immediate.

One of the keys to projects such as the hurricane recovery effort, Gautreaux says, is exposing more people to the Habitat experience. "Once people see it with their own eyes and touch it, they get the feel for what we're trying to do," he says. "They get the bug."

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