Two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated large swathes of New Orleans, country crooners Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood figured they’d lend some star power to a week-long homebuilding effort there led by Habitat for Humanity and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.

Celebrities participating in one-off charitable endeavors is nothing new, but what the husband-and-wife performers didn’t expect was to discover the former U.S. president and First Lady bickering on the build site like any other married couple.

“They were arguing about a measurement of a board. They just couldn’t get it,” said Brooks on Monday, remembering his first build alongside the Carters, whom he found refreshingly normal. “Finally she just threw her hands up and said, ‘OK. You can cut it again but it will still be too short.’”

The Carters had made history for their humility while sleeping in a church basement during their first build in New York City 38 years ago. They were no more presumptuous — and no less hands on — in New Orleans in 2007.

Continuing a tradition

Inspired by their hands-on volunteerism, Brooks and Yearwood have continued to participate in Work Project builds almost annually for the past 17 years, reuniting with the former first family to install dozens of homes at a time for low-to-moderate income homebuyers around the world. The country stars continued the tradition without them this year. Rosalynn Carter died last year; Jimmy Carter, who entered home hospice care in Georgia more than 18 months ago, turns 100 on Tuesday.

“You tell your girls when they’re growing up, you tell anyone that will listen, you always want to be part of something that’s bigger than anything you can do by yourself,” said Brooks, addressing a tent full of media cameras during an afternoon press event Monday at the build site on St. Paul’s East Side.

The occasion for their latest Work Project build is the Heights, the development unfolding on the 112-acre former Hillcrest Golf Course property off Arlington Avenue, where Habitat for Humanity is installing the first 30 of some 174 affordable Habitat homes.

The residences range from four-plex townhomes to single-family houses that will be sold to future Twin Cities Habitat clients at lower-than-typical interest rates and below-market prices.

‘Not just an urban core problem’

The work site — the largest in the history of Twin Cities Habitat — was abuzz with roughly 1,000 volunteers on Monday, the first of five workdays that will draw some 4,000 participants in all, many coming from out of state.

According to the Minnesota Housing Partnership, even though wages have crept up in recent years, the rising cost of housing has far outpaced the increase. Owner incomes rose 2% across the past five years; home values rose 19% in the same period. A household would need to earn a combined annual salary of $98,500 to afford a median-priced home in Minnesota, a threshold that adds to the state’s racial homeownership gap. Some 77% of white families in the state own their own home, compared to 29% of Black families.

“This is not just an urban core problem,” said Chris Coleman, president and chief executive officer of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, during Monday’s media event. “This is a problem in rural communities, and urban and suburban communities. … You can’t grow Polaris or Digi-Key (Electronics) up in northern Minnesota unless employees have a place to live.”

That sentiment was echoed by Jonathan Reckford, chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity International, who said communities around the nation are struggling with housing costs.

“Ultimately, it’s all about land and financing,” Reckford said. “And if you look at the gap between what the median family can afford and what a house costs to create right now, it’s the widest it’s been in modern history.  … In many of our large metros, Habitat is either joining or creating large mixed-income communities.”

‘Decision-making power and self-determination’

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who picked up a drill and lent a hand to the build on Monday, called homeownership an important path toward building wealth and stability for low-income families.

“When my business school dean said the word ‘equity,’ she was talking about … the right to decision-making power and self-determination,” said the mayor. “Every hammer swing that we hear is the sound of a family being able to move into a home with equity. … We need more housing units.”

Yearwood said the Habitat builds have become a week she and Brooks look forward to annually. Twice, the Work Project has taken them to Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, where the poverty was immediately apparent upon their arrival.

“You get off the plane in Port au Prince and you cry all the way to the build site,” Yearwood said. “And then we went back the second year … you cry just a little bit less, because you do see improvement, even though it’s tough. My favorite thing was to go back to the build site and … see the homeowners, and see the light in their eyes, and see them thriving. Everyone deserves that opportunity.”

Related Articles

Mary J. Blige to play her first Twin Cities show in 15 years at Xcel Energy Center in March

Have questions about home buying? Get answers at Thursday’s housing fair.

St. Paul police: Man jumps into vehicle, steals it as driver performs sobriety tests

Two downtown St. Paul medical office buildings go to auction in October

Q-and-A with Habitat for Humanity’s Chris Coleman and Cathy Lawrence