“One, two, three . . . GO IRISH!” Somewhere in South Bend, IN, a group of determined individuals donning gold helmets huddled together and shouted these words.
Don’t be fooled! This wasn’t a Saturday in Notre Dame Stadium during a home game weekend. That rallying cry didn’t echo from the Fighting Irish football players, whose heads are topped by helmets containing flakes of 23.9 karat gold from the Golden Dome itself. No, these gold helmets were, in fact, hard hats. And hammers, not footballs, would soon be in the wearers’ hands.
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, an assortment of people affiliated with the University of Notre Dame and Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County gathered under a tent in South Bend’s Near Northwest Neighborhood, located about 10 minutes from campus. This particular morning marked the kick-off event for Inauguration Build 2024, an initiative included among an array of other events linked to the inauguration of Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., the university’s 18th president. Inauguration Build 2024, a visionary week-long community service project, sought to bring together hundreds of volunteers from Notre Dame in collaboration with Habitat of St. Joseph County to contribute to the construction of five new Habitat homes along Harrison Avenue. The fifth home was officially sponsored by President Dowd as part of his inauguration initiative.
On Monday, Sept. 16, Inauguration Build 2024 started with a “wall build” on campus, with volunteers constructing walls to be transported to the construction site of the fifth home. At the kick-off event the following morning, Tim Sexton, the Associate Vice President of Public Affairs of the university, noted, “Yesterday, we built walls over on Dorr Lot, and the faces of those that were working were just beaming. ... At the end of the day, I don’t think [the volunteers] really wanted to leave. They wanted to keep working. That’s typical of Notre Dame people.”
This enthusiasm — this readiness to serve — carried over throughout the week.
Also present at Tuesday morning’s opening ceremony was the man of the hour, Dowd, who was officially inaugurated on Sept. 13. While at the podium, Dowd shared, “In my inaugural address just a couple of days ago, I talked about how South Bend and Notre Dame share a future. We also share a present. And in many ways, coming together like this is all about … that present that we share, that future that we share.” This sentiment expressing a need for further integration of Notre Dame with the South Bend community aligns well with “Notre Dame 2033: A Strategic Framework.” This strategic framework, which was published in 2023 to guide the university for the next decade, included “Engagement with South Bend and the region” as one of Notre Dame’s essential opportunities and challenges. The framework included the assertion that “It is no clearer than ever before that for Notre Dame to thrive, the South Bend region must also prosper.” Supporting South Bend’s prosperity is a priority for Dowd, given his intentional decision to address affordable housing — a nationwide issue relevant to South Bend — in his inauguration.
Dowd centered the conversation about affordable housing around human dignity.
“We’re talking about housing that is befitting of the dignity of each and every human being, and having decent housing is so important for anyone to realize his or her potential. This is a great opportunity to come together in respect of human dignity — the God-given dignity that each and every one of us has,” Dowd said.
In this respect and others, the partnership between Notre Dame and Habitat for Humanity is quite intuitive. As Jim Williams, the president and CEO of Habitat of St. Joseph County, put it, there exists a real “synergy” between the mission of the Church and Notre Dame and that of Habitat. While it is widely known that a key aspect of Habitat’s mission is to advocate for affordable housing, not all are familiar with Habitat’s Christian underpinnings: demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ is their first core principle.
Notre Dame and Habitat have worked together for over 25 years.
“For some of the houses that [the students] helped us build, the families have already paid off their mortgage,” said Williams, demonstrating the longevity of the partnership.
He explained how the father of a Notre Dame student volunteer from several years ago was so impressed with his daughter learning how to install drywall that he started an endowment for Notre Dame’s student chapter of Habitat. Today, that endowment stands at over a million dollars, and it allows the student chapter to sponsor a house each year.
In addition to sponsorship and volunteerism, over the past few years, Notre Dame has been closely involved with the home design process for Habitat of St. Joseph County. John Mellor, Associate Professor of the practice at the Notre Dame School of Architecture, began working with Williams in 2020 to create an opportunity for architecture students to learn how to design real houses.
“Our partnership has led to the construction of a dozen new houses in the past three and a half years using five unique student designs, vastly exceeding my expectation of one new house per year,” Mellor said.
Mellor’s design studio teaches fourth-year architecture students how to design actual homes for construction in South Bend. As Mellor shared, the real-life nature of these projects calls for students to understand the codes and zoning restrictions of South Bend, as well as how to document buildings for the purposes of building permits and the assembly process. Mellor’s students see their designs brought to life and often get to help build them, gaining an incredible addition to their architecture portfolios and making them more competitive in the job market after graduation.
As Williams noted during the kick-off event, “It’s a win-win situation.” The students benefit, certainly, but so does the South Bend community.
“This work has enhanced the city's efforts to increase construction of infill housing — new houses in existing neighborhoods on previously vacant parcels. It helps in the rebuilding of these neighborhoods, bringing stability and increasing the tax base for the city,” Mellor explained.
Further, according to Mellor, the designs are meant to be, “as good or better than the market-rate new housing available today, but designed in a way that is still affordable to build and durable enough to last.” The goal is to provide high-quality, dignified home designs that are affordable to people who otherwise would not have been able to achieve homeownership.
Part of what makes Habitat for Humanity a distinct affordable housing program is its requirement for the Habitat families to complete a certain number of hours of sweat equity — for example, by working on the Habitat build site of their, or someone else’s, future house. During the week of Inauguration Build 2024, over 22 Habitat families worked on the Harrison Avenue build sites, including the future owners of the five homes associated with the inauguration. One of those future owners, Leslie Kaminsky, briefly shared her story with the volunteers during Tuesday morning’s ceremony.
“As my daughter would grow up, she would start to notice the beautiful homes for sale, and she would point to those homes and say, ‘Mom, let’s move into that house!’” Kaminsky said. “She was pointing at her dreams, and in her child mind, she didn’t understand the barriers that kept her and me from being homeowners.”
Kaminsky then went on to express her gratitude to Habitat for allowing her to realize what had previously been an impossible dream. For Kaminsky, homeownership means creating generational wealth that she can eventually pass down to her daughter.
“Your time today will live past today,” Kaminsky said to the volunteers.
The University of Notre Dame is America’s leading Catholic research university, possessing an immense influence nationally and globally. Tackling issues at a national and global scale is a valuable objective for Notre Dame. Nevertheless, Inauguration Build 2024 serves as a reminder that being a force for good can, and should, start in our own backyard, as Mellor put it.
Originally published by at architecture.nd.edu on October 04, 2024.