High school student Niyukuri Blaise spent most of Monday ripping up musty carpet in the attic of a home that's seen better days in Cleveland's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.
His summer job is to rehab this house along with a handful of other students, part of a partnership between local nonprofits Youth Opportunities Unlimited and the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. He's excited about it and said he thinks it'll prepare him well for the future.
"After high school, I'm going to try out to be a construction worker, that's my dream job," said Blaise, a student at Cleveland's Early College High School on the John Hay Academic Campus.
It's the seventh year of what the nonprofits call the Building Great Futures initiative, which so far has provided paying work for 70 students and rehabbed 16 homes for local families. Those homes are then sold by Habitat for Humanity to families with a zero-interest mortgage, like Habitat’s other homes. This summer, eight students are set to rebuild two houses, the other located in Cleveland's Union Miles neighborhood.
The program is dual-purpose: helping families into a new, affordable home and jumpstarting careers in the building trades, Craig Dorn, CEO of Youth Opportunities Unlimited, said Tuesday during remarks outside the Mt. Pleasant home.
"This is really the embodiment of Y.O.U's mission, which is about taking young people and helping them on a path to economic self-sufficiency," he said.
John Litten, president and CEO of Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity, explained that Habitat staff work with the students to teach them how to renovate homes.
"Those students have helped 17 adults and 27 children realize the dream of owning their own home," Litten said. "These numbers will only increase as we go through this summer."
The two homes were sold to the Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity by the Cuyahoga County Land Bank for $1 each. The land bank also provided a $30,000 grant to fund renovations.
Tayshawn Day, a senior at John F. Kennedy High School, ripped out kitchen cabinets Monday at the Mt. Pleasant home. He said he was looking forward to seeing a family move into the home after their work is done.
"I want to see the aftermath. Like, I've already seen what we already did," he said. "I want to see what happens after we're done."
