Maggie Spence’s house in East Oakland has handrails on the porch, grab bars in the bathroom, a fresh coat of paint, a repaired roof, new windows, and a spruced up yard.
Crucially, it’s a home she can move around in safely and easily as a person who’s still dealing with relentless surgeries and physical disabilities from a car accident in 2012. That wasn’t the case initially.
“I was feeling stuck in my home,” Spence told The Oaklandside. “I couldn’t really afford all the stuff that had to be done, and in my condition I couldn’t work.”
But after a few years, she got connected with Rebuilding Together Oakland-East Bay, a nonprofit organization providing free home modification and rehabbing to older low-income homeowners and people with disabilities. Much of the work is done by volunteers. By completing major projects and adding small but critical accommodations, they made Spence’s home near the Coliseum livable again.
“At the end, they show you the work they did, and you just feel a sense of pride knowing that people care,” she said.
Executive Director Lisa Malul said Rebuilding Together Oakland-East Bay has filled a niche that is often overlooked or considered “politically inconvenient.” With such pressing housing issues to address like homelessness and tenant security, physical repairs for longtime homeowners are not often prioritized.
“Just because they are living in a home, doesn’t mean that they’re living in a safe place,” Malul said. “Most of our clients are single people making less than $30,000 a year, and their homes are falling down.”
But as of March, no more residents are receiving the organization’s services. Rebuilding Together Oakland-East Bay—one of multiple Rebuilding Together chapters in the Bay Area and over 100 nationally—is closing.
Malul said the decision was largely based on a shifting understanding of how to best help older residents “age in place”—and who’s best suited to do that work. A tougher economic landscape has also meant the organization has more expenses and fewer people to do its work than it used to.
“There’s been a movement away from thinking about home modification as simple repairs, to thinking about it as part of a more holistic, whole person-centered care model,” Malul said. “So it’s no longer best practice to just go in and do a great job putting in the grab bars and the handrails.” Instead, there should be assessments of the client’s needs and fall risk by occupational therapists before and after the work, and connections to case management or support services if needed, she said.
“Ultimately, it’s not the work that we do,” said Malul, who’s been with the organization for 10 years.
Rebuilding Together is referring clients and people who need services to other organizations like the Institute on Aging, which offer the sort of “wraparound” services they can’t. But they’ve finished all the jobs they had in progress on people’s homes so “nobody’s left hanging,” Malul said. There are some other home repair resources out there, too, like Renew Alameda County and other nearby Rebuilding Together affiliates. Rebuilding Together East Bay Network, which serves Berkeley and Contra Costa County, will work in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity’s Oakland contract to expand services into the area, said board member Greg VanMechelen.
Rebuilding Together started in Texas in the 1970s. Back then it was called Christmas in April but in 1988 the name changed and a national headquarters opened. Local Rebuilding Together affiliates receive support from, and pay dues to, the national organization, but they’re run as individual nonprofits. Some have unique focuses, like tiny-home construction or even building affordable housing, Malul said.
The Oakland affiliate had contracts with local governments like the cities of San Leandro, Hayward, and Alameda, and the county of Alameda. For several years, it had an Oakland contract too, working with 81 clients in the city annually, according to Malul.
Rebuilding Together Oakland-East Bay says it’s served about 4,000 residents in its 35 years in operation. That work was completed by over 41,000 volunteers along with contractors and staff. The volunteers included corporate office groups doing community service work, retired contractors, labor unions, and other residents helping out with the unskilled components. The size of the volunteer base fluctuated over the years based on the economy and, more recently, the COVID-19 lockdown.
Meanwhile, costs have been increasing. The price of construction materials, rent, and healthcare and staffing have all become significantly higher.
“Funding isn’t going as far as it used to,” Malul said. Safety concerns for both staff and volunteers have also impacted the work recently. Someone broke into their shipping-container storage in the Jack London District and stole materials worth $20,000. Malul was attacked while walking to her car after work. Rebuilding Together canceled its annual fundraising event by Lake Merritt last year because not enough people wanted to come there.
In general, it can be hard to fund home rehabilitation or modification.
Physical repairs don’t often seem to yield strong returns on investment for governments and donors, Malul said, mainly because of the cost. A new roof—one of the most common needs among clients—costs something like $15,000. When you add staff costs and overhead, it’s closer to $20,000.
“Nobody’s going to say, well, okay, $200,000 for 10 roofs. That’s horrible ROI,” she said. With so many worthy organizations and ideas and urgent housing needs, the work of governments and foundations choosing who to subsidize can feel like a “zero-sum game,” she said. The prevalence of lead paint in Oakland’s older housing stock adds even more work and costs to their projects.
But Malul is fiercely proud of the “heart-centered, warm, loving, caring work that’s happened for so many years here.”
She sees the closure of Rebuilding Together Oakland-East Bay as more bittersweet than tragic. She believes that consolidating work and resources makes more sense than stretching organizations like hers and so many other local nonprofits too thin.
“In this area, we are very rich with people that are doing really good work in housing and senior care,” she said.
Spence, the East Oakland client, said she was crushed to hear the organization is closing its doors. She recalled the joy her son felt helping out the team of volunteers working on their house after her accident.
“Things happen and you gotta move on—but they help you move on,” Spence said. “The work that they’ve done for me and countless others for free has changed my life.”
This story was updated after publication with information on Rebuilding Together East Bay Network’s expansion into Oakland.
