By Nancy Gutierrez
Congressman Devin Nunes attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Lindsay, Tuesday Jan. 13 for the Youthbuild new homes construction site in Sierra View Estates.
Youthbuild , a program administered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), provides grants to nonprofit organizations to help youth learn housing construction job-skills and complete their high school education.
Community Services and EmploymentTtraining (C-SET) and Self-Help Enterprises (SHE) have partnered to bring the Youthbuild program to Tulare County. For seven years C-SET and SHE have provided education and employment training for young people.
Now the Tulare County Youth Corp will be building two homes in Lindsay through the Youthbuild program.
HUD representative Rollie Smith said the students in the program were learning important trades that would be needed throughout the next 10-15 years in the Valley. While C-SET is helping to strengthen the youth in Tulare County and create self-reliant citizens, SHE is helping to bring housing to low income families.
In the partnership between C-SET and SHE it is C-SET's responsibility to recruit the youth builders and foremen and it is SHE's responsibility to choose the community, housing materials and families for the project.
SHE is also in the process of constructing more homes in Sierra View through their self-help housing program where families share in the labor of building their own homes.
SHE also prepares families for the responsibility of homeownership. For more information on Youthbuild or C-SET call 732-4194. To learn more about SHE call 651-1000.
For the complete story pick up a copy of the Lindsay Gazette.
