A Camden program is helping lower-wage earners become homeowners

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A Camden organization is giving residents a unique opportunity to become homeowners.

Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society in New Jersey buys abandoned properties in the city, rehabilitates them and sells them at a significant discount to people who otherwise don’t have the resources to become homeowners.

Two decades ago, the program benefited Rinse German, a factory worker who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as an adult, and was able to realize her American Dream of owning a home. German only speaks Spanish. Her daughter, Elaysel, translated her words.

“I am very grateful for the opportunity because the program gave me the ability to provide a stable shelter for my children,” she said. “It’s a place they could safely return to at the end of each day.”

Father Bob McDermott, a former parish priest who grew up in Camden, founded the Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society in 1985 because he was determined to rebuild the community and restore it to the kind of family-friendly environment he remembered as a child.

Pilar Hogan Closkey, executive director, said the organization’s work is reducing blight while improving neighborhoods and increasing home ownership.

“So really it’s not only converting that house, but we’re also putting a house back on the tax rolls for the city, bringing more kids into the school system, we’re bringing families back into the commercial corridors,” she said.

Closkey said homeowners typically pay between $90,000 and $150,000 for a renovated house. The Carpenter Society raises roughly the same amount of money per home for the renovations.

“We get funding through the federal government, from state, county, local, the city, so we use different government funding, such as programs through HUD,” she said.

Individual and corporate donors also help support the organization.

Tracy Bell has been the Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society construction manager for 22 years. Bell said there’s a lot of work that goes into upgrading the homes.

“The roofs are in the basement, they have trees growing through them, so we have to go in and do a total gut rehab,” he said.

He said his team starts with the home’s foundation before rebuilding walls, installing roofs, new plumbing, HVAC systems, rewiring electrical work and adding new doors and windows.

He said if a street has three abandoned homes on it, Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society will try to buy all three of them to make the block “whole.”

Elaysel German said her mother believes home ownership led her and her siblings to attend college.

“I think it’s the stability component,” she said. “The home was a place to build emotional stability. It provided a sense of community, a sense of home that we didn’t have before when we were renters.”

She said that, prior to her mother buying the house, the family was unsettled, renting apartments in many different neighborhoods.

Closkey said over the past 39 years the Carpenter Society has created a total of 1,042 homes for families.

She said they are now seeing the second generation of families they supported return to buy homes.

“We’re actually seeing that, financially and professionally, they are in a completely different place than their parents were 20 or 30 years ago,” she said.

Bell said helping Camden residents become homeowners is very satisfying.

“When we hand over those keys to them, you can see on their faces the happiness and the pride they have receiving these houses,” he said.

Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society is currently renovating and then selling about a dozen homes a year.

Those interested may learn more about the program by calling 856-966-8117 or visiting Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society online.