Hundreds of volunteers 'Raise a Village' for the homeless in Easley

More than 500 volunteers rolled up their sleeves and raised a village outside the Dream Center of Pickens County on Saturday, surpassing the organizers' hopes.

“I couldn’t believe it. We were about to have a heart attack, really,” said Chris Wilson, executive director. "It worked out great.”

The “Raise a Village” event resulted in getting the frames up on 13 tiny houses that will become the core of Opportunity Village – a home for the homeless in Pickens County who are willing to work at getting their lives back together.

Two more houses will be built soon, Wilson said.

A roofing company is helping get the roofs on so they’ll all be in the dry in the next week or so, she said.

“We’re not going to wait around. We’re moving ahead with getting them finished,” she said.

The plan is to get the village completed and the program in operation by the end of the year.

It’s Pickens County’s first homeless shelter, but it’s not intended as a long-term facility for residents. They’ll be working toward getting jobs and eventually paying rent on their own homes, under the Dream Center’s “hand up, not a handout” philosophy.

The Dream Center is a faith-based organization that receives no government support.

The homes, some of them 168 square feet, and some 270 square feet, were prefabricated in part by students at the Pickens County Career & Technology Center. Numerous donors contributed building materials and cash toward the project.

Each house had one to two licensed contractors overseeing the construction Saturday, and each will be inspected to make sure they’re up to code, Wilson said.

To accommodate the flood of volunteers, nearby churches and businesses loaned the use of their parking lots, and shuttles were run back and forth from the site on Hillcrest Drive throughout the day, Wilson said.

Powdersville High School, Wren High School and Easley High School are each sponsoring a house, with a contribution of $15,000 each. NewSpring Church plans to build one of the houses.

Sponsorships are available for three more of the tiny houses and six of the eight “Step Two” units, which will be slightly larger and will be offered to those who reach specific personal milestones in their personal success plan.

In both those steps, the residents will earn “Dream Dollars” for completing assignments, some of which they will use to pay “rent” on their tiny house.

In Step Three, residents will move to one of 10 regular family houses in the nearby neighborhood that the Dream Center has purchased and plans to renovate for that purpose. Nine sponsorship opportunities are available for those, Wilson said.

For more information, go to www.dreamcenterpc.org or call 644-8885.