Hunter and Seneca Price put blood, sweat and tears into building their Heber City home in a very literal sense.
The couple participated in the latest round of Self-Help Homes, a statewide affordable housing program that allows participants to save an average of $70,000 on their homes by applying for Section 502 loans through USDA Rural Development. The loans subsidize interest rates as low as 1% to assist low-income applicants in obtaining housing.
The catch? Participants in Self-Help Homes build their new houses themselves with the guidance of a construction supervisor. The program requires 35 hours of construction per family per week. All families in a group help build everyone’s homes collectively, with the occasional help of volunteers.
The group of 10 families, including the Prices, celebrated the completion of their homes near Wasatch High School last Thursday.
Between the Price couple, Hunter produced the bulk of the sweat. An electrician with a construction background, he clocked the majority of construction hours for his family.
He shared an equal amount of tears with Seneca. His were more so because of how “physically taxing” the experience was. Seneca’s were because of the separation.
“For the last eight months, she’s been a single mom,” Hunter said.
The couple previously lived in Springville and chose to move to Heber City because they wanted to be surrounded by nature. Six days a week since August, Hunter would endure the 45-minute commute to Heber City to participate in construction.
“He gets up before the kids are awake. He comes home after they’re in bed. They see their dad on Sundays, and that was it for months,” Seneca said.
The sweat and tears are expected from any Self-Help Homes program participant. The blood is a whole other story.
“I sliced my leg open with a skill saw and had to get 17 stitches,” Hunter said. “I knew it wasn’t a life-threatening issue because I wasn’t, like, spraying blood or anything.”
He was kneeling on the ground, framing the back deck of his future home, when he accidentally cut himself. He immediately called another family in the program, who were working just down the street, and asked them to take him to urgent care. It was quite the experience to have with a future neighbor. The family even lent Hunter a pair of pants to replace the bloodstained ones.
Despite the blood, sweat and tears, Hunter and Seneca agreed that the program was worth it.
Jeremy Phelps, the lead construction supervisor on Self-Help Homes’ Heber City projects, said Hunter’s injury was definitely “one of the more gnarly ones” he’s seen during the program.
In the case that a participant is injured on the job site, Self-Help Homes has an insurance policy in place that allows the nonprofit to cover 100% of costs if the participant does not have insurance. If the participant does have insurance, the nonprofit will pay for anything their provider will not cover.
Avoiding injury is one reason Self-Help Homes has contractors handle the plumbing, electrical, HVAC and drywall installation on homes.
Usually, the contractors have no trouble staying ahead of the Self-Help Homes group in the construction process, but this group of families was so hardworking that they consistently caught up with the contractors.
“Ten homes in seven months is really, really good. Only a few groups have done that,” Phelps said, adding that he thought they could have finished in six months if the contractors had worked faster.
Self-Help Homes has built 143 homes in Heber City since 2010. Another 12 will begin construction in the next few months. When they’re built, the Wasatch Vista subdivision of 120 lots near Wasatch High School will be complete.
After that, Self-Help Homes will shift its focus to 17 acres of land near Southfield Road, where it is currently installing infrastructure to develop 44 additional homes.
The participants in the latest group — which is the 80th since Self-Help Homes’ founding in 2000 — totaled 13,451 hours of construction altogether, or more than 560 days collectively. Between them, the 10 families are raising 25 children in Heber City. Six of the 10 families hail from the area and participated in the program to afford to continue living there.
DJ and McKeil Mahoney were raised in Heber City and can now raise their daughter, Cameron, there.
The Mahoneys first applied to Self-Help homes five years ago.
Applying families must be at or below 80% of the area media income to qualify, which is $104,200 annually for a family of four in Wasatch County.
DJ works in IT, and McKeil is a massage therapist. When the couple first applied for Self-Help Homes, the upper income limit for a family of three was around $84,000. DJ made around $72,000, so McKeil had to quit her job for her family to qualify.
To save money as they waited for the opportunity to build a home, the Mahoneys moved from Saratoga Springs into a basement apartment in McKeil’s parents’ home in Heber City around two years ago.
McKeil’s father is Heber City Councilor Sid Ostergaard. He said the fact that his daughter had to quit her job, move in with her parents and build a home from the ground up demonstrates the extreme affordable housing challenges in Heber City.
“That’s a big thing that everybody needs to understand. It’s hard to be qualified for something like this. And what they did is what has to happen. … They were fortunate enough to be able to stay with us,” Ostergaard said. “Not a lot of people have that option.”
Ostergaard has six children in total. Three have moved out of the county.
“Who knows if they can move back? They can’t afford it,” he said.
Ostergaard is a board member of the Wasatch County Housing Authority. Facilitating affordable housing in Heber City was one of the reasons he ran for the city council.
The Heber City Council’s next effort to address the issue will be an “Affordable Housing 101” program organized by Jason Glidden, executive director of Mountainlands Community Housing Trust.
A date has not yet been set for the program, which will allow Heber City officials and the public to tour affordable housing communities, like the public-private Park City development EngineHouse. It will also connect members of the city council with affordable housing developers, including Brad Bishop, executive director of Self-Help Homes, to better understand the challenges and needs of developers in Heber City.
“We’re bringing in developers to say, ‘This is what I actually need to get this done. If you really want this, this is what needs to happen,’” Ostergaard said. “Hopefully, it’ll educate us and open our eyes.”
In the meantime, Self-Help Homes will continue to facilitate homeownership in Heber City.
The organization’s lasting legacy in the valley was best represented on Thursday by a quilt woven by former participant Deonn Stott. She and her husband, Evan, participated in the program five years ago and live just a few blocks from the latest families to join their neighborhood.
Deonn finished the quilt in February. It depicts her and Evan in the style of “American Gothic,” holding carpentry equipment in front of their home. Miniature versions of the other nine homes that were built as part of their group dot the edges of the blanket.
Deonn finished the five-year quilting project ahead of the unveiling of the latest group of homes to honor her friend, McKeil.
Deonn and McKeil gave the same reasoning for their participation in Self-Help Homes: There was no other option.
