To learn more about Americans Building Community, visit
http://www.groupnw.net.
Tim Rammage seemed like one tough dude Saturday — spattered with dirt and mud, hefting junk wood into a trash bin, slamming metal doors shut.
But a close look showed the big guy was crying with joy while he watched his own dark handiwork being demolished.
“Praise the Lord,” he said as a crowd of volunteers tore down a rickety porch roof once added to this little Vancouver home without a permit. “I have been praying for this to happen, and I knew I had to be here when it did. It’s a personal thing.”
When he was living a life of crime and vice, Rammage said, he and his friends squatted here — at the home of an elderly lady in the Rose Village neighborhood. It was a place he used to come and buy drugs — not from her but from someone taking advantage of her, he said. He helped build a porch and a shed onto the old house — but it was nothing to be proud of, he said, just a slapdash job done by people with no place else to land.
Six years ago, he said, a neighborhood friend who was tired of bailing him out offered to help him one last time — if he’d get off drugs and go to church. Somehow — maybe because he’d hit a wall of desperation, with nothing left to live for — he managed it. He attended the Lord’s Gym program at New Life Church nearby, and eventually entered its residential treatment program. He got involved in Saturday church service projects.
And six years later, Saturday morning, here he was — clean and sober, leaking from the eyes and repairing a bit of the mess he’d made. He was one of several dozen volunteers, from Crossroads and Summit View churches and elsewhere, who converged on that Rose Village house to make a difference for a person, and property, in serious need of help.
The place had come to the attention of Vancouver police because of drug activity and code enforcement because of various nuisances — including the illegal building additions as well as junk strewn all over, according to Vancouver Police Cpl. Drue Russell. Criminal and trespass matters have been taken care of, Russell said, and since cleaning up the property was more than code enforcement has resources to take on, the city turned to a nonprofit neighborhood organizer for help.
City officials, including police and code enforcement, “are relying more and more on community volunteers, especially in this limited economy,” Russell said.
Building partnerships
Americans Building Community, the brainchild of neighborhood resident Mark Maggiora, is a low-visibility community development group that aims to broker partnerships among other nonprofit agencies, churches, businesses, neighborhood associations and anyone else who’ll help the Fourth Plain corridor move from blight to recovery.
Since it kicked off in the summer of 2008, ABC has brought together volunteers and skilled handymen to paint peeling houses, clean trashed properties, plant new vegetable gardens and otherwise rejuvenate some of the rougher spots in the Rose Village area. Right now, Maggiora said, ABC is developing grants and plans for an “Affordable Street of Dreams” where properties can be bought, improved to add value, and resold at extremely affordable prices.
“They key thing is code enforcement,” Maggiora said. “They are the most in-the-know about livability issues. They are dealing with, ‘How do you help folks of limited means or who have disability issues, who are really beyond being able to help themselves?’ They can turn to us.”
On Saturday, the small army of volunteers demolished several illegal structures and filled two construction Dumpsters to the brim. They’ll have to return next weekend to complete the job, they said, since a single day turned out to be insufficient to get the job done.
“I am praising God with every piece I touch,” said Rammage, 49, as he tore up and threw away parts of his former life. “It’s awesome.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.
