Senior Home Improvement programs
- Thread starter Von Jones
- Start date
Some are good, some not so much. I have often used YouTube videos to learn how to do things I'm not sure about. Some make things look easier than they are by ignoring the harder parts, while others depend on tools or skills that I don't have.
Ed Wilson
Well-known member
I found the above for Ohio. Lots of ifs and buts to qualify.
Beth Gallagher
Well-known member
I assume you mean the volunteer organizations that make home repairs for seniors, Von? We haven't used one, but for many years my husband has participated as a volunteer since he has good carpentry skills and can do plumbing and electrical work. I would definitely take advantage of such a program. The volunteers are screened before they are allowed to participate, and it is a group activity so there's no one-on-one stranger in the house.
The company he worked for provided materials and he and other volunteers spent many weekends on home repair projects. He absolutely loved it though he has not been actively involved for a while. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-100-volunteers-help-restore-185500712.html
I see that I misread your OP earlier. Yes, there are such programs, but they likely differ greatly from one area to another. Through a non-profit organization for seniors, we had our house fully insulated (walls, crawlspace, attic) and, in a separate program but through the same agency, we had a heat pump installed, all at no cost to us.
Although our contacts were made through a senior's organization, the program itself was through a grant intended to enhance heating efficiency, and may have been available to people of all ages.
Here is the link for help for seniors in Ohio, @Von Jones . They are part of the Council on Aging for your state, so if you contact them, you should be able to see what help you qualify for and they can refer you to the people that can help you .
Since we don’t own our home, I don’t think that we can qualify for any of the help , but if you own your own home, you should be able to get whatever they have for seniors and housing.,
Since we don’t own our home, I don’t think that we can qualify for any of the help , but if you own your own home, you should be able to get whatever they have for seniors and housing.,
It was a regional branch of the Council on Aging that made arrangements to insulate our house and have a heat pump installed, bring us from about 6 tanks of heating oil per year to about 2.
I used to work with a non-profit that did home repairs for folks who could not afford to pay for them. We did everything but roofs and plumbing. I did it for 7 years...about 6-7 projects/year. Maybe 1/3 of those were either permanent handicap ramps, or had ramps as a component of the project. There were some county government resources (we worked in 2 counties), but this is a rural area so resources were scarce. I directed some folks to a state program, but I'm not sure what those programs covered.
Habitat For Humanity started doing repairs as well as new home construction (their Brush With Kindness program), but like their homes, the recipient has to pay. Labor is free unless the work has to be contracted out (HVAC plumbing, etc.) The cost of materials (and contracted labor) gets passed through with no markup. If the materials or contracted labor are donated, there's no cost for that part of the project to the recipient. Habitat sets up loans for the recipient at a very low rate, and the payments go back into the kitty to fund other projects/loans. They wanted to partner with us at the local level since they needed people with our skills, but we never charged for what we did, and we did not want to partner on projects where the recipient was left with a payment.
If anyone is looking for this kind of help, just call any of the local non-profits that do this sort of work. Any one of them can point you to whatever resource might be the best fit, since they all work together and generally know what's out there. There are probably income requirements. Each affiliate for the national outfit I was with had their own maximum household income that qualified, set as a % of that county's average income.
Habitat For Humanity started doing repairs as well as new home construction (their Brush With Kindness program), but like their homes, the recipient has to pay. Labor is free unless the work has to be contracted out (HVAC plumbing, etc.) The cost of materials (and contracted labor) gets passed through with no markup. If the materials or contracted labor are donated, there's no cost for that part of the project to the recipient. Habitat sets up loans for the recipient at a very low rate, and the payments go back into the kitty to fund other projects/loans. They wanted to partner with us at the local level since they needed people with our skills, but we never charged for what we did, and we did not want to partner on projects where the recipient was left with a payment.
If anyone is looking for this kind of help, just call any of the local non-profits that do this sort of work. Any one of them can point you to whatever resource might be the best fit, since they all work together and generally know what's out there. There are probably income requirements. Each affiliate for the national outfit I was with had their own maximum household income that qualified, set as a % of that county's average income.