UC Review: Walnut Hill homes to receive makeovers

UC Review: Walnut Hill homes to receive makeovers

In the span of a single day, five Walnut Hill homes will undergo essential renovations on Saturday, October 10th. That’s when Rebuilding Together in partnership with the Enterprise Center and approximately 150 volunteers from Cricket and the Wharton School of business will descend with toolboxes and good intentions on the 4900 and 5000 blocks of Chancellor St.

“Most of the homes are over seventy years old,” explained Carrie Rathmann, the Executive Director of Rebuilding Philadelphia Together- a local non-profit that focuses on connecting volunteers to homeowners in need to keep their homes warm, safe and dry- of the deterioration inflicted upon the homes slated for repairs. Saturday’s repairs, continued Rathmann, will include, “window replacement, dry wall replacement, plumbing, electrical work, repainting, caulking, basement clean-outs and alley cleanups.”

Most of the homes involved, “have already had work done to prepare for the other repairs,” explained Rathmann, adding that Saturday’s work won’t be extensive. Some homes, for example, said, Rathmann, “are in need of serious repairs totaling over thirty thousand dollars.”

After all, said Rathmann, the volunteers aren’t necessarily equipped to address some of problems affecting the homes in question. “Though they’re very thorough and know what they’re doing.”

With so many homeowners in need of assistance, the US Census estimates that there are 60,000 low-income homeowners in Philadelphia for instance one might wonder how the houses in Walnut Hill were selected.

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