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Volunteers help with renovations in the home of Gabriel and Irene Villicana of Long Beach, California. The repairs were made possible with funding from the Fuller Center of Housing of Los Angeles and NRHA.

NRHA Matching Grant Funds House Renovations

A family of five in California now has a safer home due to a project partially funded by the North American Retail Hardware Association.

NRHA provided The Fuller Center for Housing of Los Angeles with a $1,000 matching grant to help Gabriel and Irene Villicana of Long Beach and their three children.

When partnering with NRHA, The Fuller Center buys project supplies from local independent home improvement retailers.  The organization bought products from Ganahl Lumber of Los Alamitos, California, for the work at the Villicanas’ home.

The Fuller Center, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate poverty housing, contributed $935 toward the project, which included repairs to fix safety issues in the house, such as plumbing that wasn’t up to code and holes in the walls.

The Fuller Center chose to help the Villicana family because Gabriel Villicana is disabled and currently going through cancer treatment, David Howard, board president for the Los Angeles organization, says. The repairs wouldn’t have been possible without the NRHA grant,  he says.

A crew of 35 volunteers from The Fuller Center recently installed a new pantry, painted hallways and three rooms, installed eight new interior doors, renovated the master bedroom closet, repaired walls and replaced a toilet.

“The house was unsafe,” Howard says.

The recent repairs are the beginning of what will probably be a three-phase renovation of the Villicana home, he says.

 

About Kate Klein

Kate is profiles editor for Hardware Retailing magazine. She reports on news and industry events and writes about retailers' unique contributions to the independent home improvement sector. She graduated from Cedarville University in her home state of Ohio, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English and minored in creative writing. She loves being an aunt, teaching writing to kids, running, reading, farm living and, as Walt Whitman says, traveling the open road, “healthy, free, the world before me.”

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