Award-winning project

HBF wins another AEA for best Community Service Project

Home Builders Foundation is proud to announce that we have been awarded an Association Excellence Award (AEA) from the National Association of Home Builders for the Best Community Service Project in 2019! Our winning entry was for the Pod Build Challenge to support Kenton Women’s Village. This is the fifth AEA awarded to Home Builders Foundation since 2014.

Home Builders Foundation was an important partner in the Pod Build Challenge that brought together twenty-one residential and commercial builders to build sleeping pods to expand the Kenton Women’s Village and provide safe and secure housing for vulnerable women living on the streets.

The purpose of this project was to assist Catholic Charities in moving the Kenton Women’s Village to a new site nearby and expand their capacity to serve homeless women in our community. Sleeping outside is dangerous, leaving women vulnerable to intimidation, theft, sexual assault and physical assault. A sleeping pod, though small, has a locking door, and provides security and a safe place for possessions. The Village offers opportunities for community, leadership, self-governance and self-determination as well as a wide range of services to help the women move onto permanent housing.

Additionally, an ongoing goal of the Home Builders Foundation (HBF) is to work closely with HBA to actively connect their advocacy efforts on housing issues with our shelter work in the community. HBF staff worked closely with the HBA to recruit residential builders to join the commercial builders already signed on to build sleeping pods and show the wide range of housing that HBA supports. The nine residential builder teams represented past Street of Dreams builders, production builders, smaller builders, women-owned businesses, remodelers, trade partners as well as members of the Professional Women in Building Council and the National Women in Roofing.

Our job as the philanthropic arm of the Home Builders Association of Metro Portland and a chapter of HomeAid, is to connect the generous building community with the expansion needs of local non-profit service providers offering much-needed services to the most vulnerable in our community.