Down on Southside, a house of purple and yellow hues sits in disrepair.
For the last several years, the owners of the home have watched it slowly deteriorate and are now at risk of losing both their home and home insurance. With the husband legally blind and wife suffering from mobility issues, the couple has found it difficult to maintain the condition of their home.
Vegetation has grown wild, half of the porch has caved in on itself and the exterior wood has rotted all the way through. The magnitude of work needed to bring the house back to life is too much for the couple to take on, but that may soon change thanks to a group of concerned volunteers.
Local businessman Ryan Munson discovered the dire situation a year and a half ago after a self-driven cleanup spree of the Southside.
“I live on the Southside of town and I was organizing these cleanup committees. We were cleaning up trash and things,” Munson said.
After conducting several trash pickups around Southside, a member of the community reached out and brought the state of this family’s house to Munson’s attention. He quickly organized a clean up crew of 35 to 40 volunteers and got to work on the overgrown lawn.
“That’s when I was aware that the house had some other issues that I couldn’t tackle at the time,” Munson said. “So you know, I was like I’m here to do the yard and I did that.”
Munson then received a call from the homeowner explaining their current situation. He sprung into action.
“I got a phone call from the gentleman that was there. He told me that he’s having problems with his insurance, he’s going to lose his home insurance and that he’s afraid that these issues are going to lead to losing his home altogether. He asked if I knew of anybody who could come and help them and if there’s anything I can do,” Munson said.
Munson began networking with the local charity organizations in town and called the public’s attention to the state of the house in a post to the Munson and Brothers Facebook page on May 25. In the post, Munson pleaded for volunteers, materials and monetary donations to help the family in need.
John Almond — founding director of the Dream Center Golden Triangle — stepped in to aid Munson without a second’s hesitation. He assessed the house and formed a list of things that needed to be repaired.
“My favorite part about this story — and every time things like this happens because this community does this time and time again — is when there’s a call, there’s an answer to it,” Munson said. “Immediately John threw out a number of a certain amount of money that we were going to need. He sent a couple of guys to assess and solve those problems (which were) much worse than we anticipated.”
A brief evaluation of the house revealed that thousands of dollars would be needed to make a real impact on the exterior. As the two continued to evaluate, the list of repairs grew more and more extensive and the predicted cost of repair began to double and triple on itself until it reached $5,000.
“We don’t even know the depth of need precisely. What we can see is all of that vegetation has to be removed. It’s just overgrowth and we know that the porch on approximately half of the porch is concave. It’s just all caved in and it’s very, very dangerous,” Almond said. “There’s not much that doesn’t have dry rot and once we start demoing it, you know, if you take away the exterior boards to repair the drywall, we don’t know what will await us.”
As soon as Almond stepped in to help, he received a text message from Renne Sanders of United Way saying that she had 52 students in need of a community volunteer opportunity. Munson then recruited the help of fellow neighbor Julie Parker of the Community Benefit Committee and the help of the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department.
“So you’ve got Dream Center, United Way and Community Benefit Committee all working together to just kind of blitz this house,” Almond said.
“And that’s the most beautiful thing about this is that so many times you see these organizations kind of wanting all the glory themselves. It seems everybody is just really concerned and loves this family and just wants to take care of them,” Munson added.
With the help of the community and all charity organizations involved, Munson and a volunteer crew of a little over 100 will start cleaning and repairing the home on June 11. The clean-up is predicted to take several days and will use the entire $5,000 dollars raised to complete.
Only the exterior of the home has been evaluated and repaired, the interior remains untouched and unevaluated.
“Our goal is to get their insurance back and hopefully stop the deterioration of the home. I would love it if they developed a better relationship with the Dream Center and maybe found some resources to work on the inside of their home, whether through more people and as they build relationships so that they can be more independent,” Munson said.
To get involved, volunteer through the Dream Center Golden Triangle website or contact the Columbus Benefit Committee through Facebook.
HOW TO HELP
■ TO DONATE: Send monetary donations to the Columbus Benefit Committee’s PayPal account at columbusbenefitfund@gmail.com.
■ TO VOLUNTEER: Sign up through the Dream Center website at https://www.dreamcenterms.org
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