rehab

 “Rehabilitation” : John David Scott

       We were on the roof when I learned that Jake was once a meth-addict. We had been laying sheets of plywood one searing afternoon. During brief lulls in the work that day, Jake recounted the dark intricacies of his addiction and the fantasy world that surrounded it, all of it culminating in a string of violence that landed him in prison.

       Jake is 29 years old and has spent the past seven years in six different facilities; he tells me of his stints in prison gangs, the write-ups, the year in solitary confinement. Time wasted. Now weeks away from parole, he feels that for the first time in a decade, things are under his control.

       “Success is my only option at this point,” he says.

       Jake is a member of the Department of Corrections crew that works at the Chaffee County Habitat for Humanity build site in Johnson Village, Colorado. The program, now in its second year, brings eight inmates from the local correctional facility to work alongside volunteers on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Aside from the occasional new face, the crew is made up of the same individuals each week. Each have their own narratives, stories they let out in increments as we huddle near the Gatorade cooler or as the workday comes to a close. There is the former tattoo artist who was pushed into drugs by his clientele; the former investment banker who tried to cover his client’s losses during the crash of 2008; the man who, as a twelve year old, was abandoned by his parents (they left a note taped to the refrigerator). There is a gifted mechanic, a carpenter, and a man gifted at both; they are family men, fathers, and men who never had fathers; men with children on their deathbeds, with wives and ex-wives. They are my coworkers; my brothers, in a sense. If there is a single strand that connects the backstories of the prison crew, it is that none of the men had any semblance of a stable home when they were young (Jake, for instance, lived alone in a borrowed tent for much of his high school career). They speak of where they “stayed” growing up. There is rarely talk of where they “lived;” no reminiscing of “home.”

       My work in Chaffee County has shown me that stable, decent housing promotes health. Children raised in Habitat homes unanimously perform better in school. Parents, for a number of reasons, are more likely to be promoted or to earn a degree. This evidence—proof that sound design matters, that it saves lives—is my primary motivation to work in affordable housing. Considerations of sustainability or “green” design are inherent in my design process from the inception of a project. “Green” housing is simply housing to me and, thankfully, to many in my generation. And so I intend to build houses that are sustainable from an environmental standpoint but that first sustain people. I intend to build homes.

       

      Their stories are bleak (and sadder still, common), but their morale is not. Our days with the Department of Corrections crew teem with jokes and the kind of razzing that builds camaraderie and allows for borders to be crossed. I compliment Jake’s framing abilities one day and he grins wryly:

       “Yeah, I’m a real parole-fessional,” he says.

Others share the sentiment:

       “We’re only part-time convicts,” they say.

       Like me, Jake and his fellow offenders have had a hand in every phase of the build, from excavation to framing to siding. The project—an affordable 3,000 square foot duplex—has become a central motivating force in our lives; something to live for. On days when the inmates are off working on other projects (the prison has a dairy and other enterprises), they coast by the site in their white passenger van. Their guard deviates from the scheduled route to give the men a glimpse of the site; enough to keep them going, to keep them dreaming, perhaps.

       I can say with a great deal of conviction that I would have never worked with inmates in conventional settings of architectural practice. The same can be said of most underserved groups. If it were not for this project—two homes amidst a dusty trailer park in rural Colorado—I would have never met friends and mentors like Jake. A former professor of mine once asked a roomful of first-year architecture students, “Who’s not here?” In mainstream architecture and design today, many people from many groups are not present.

       Prior to my work with Habitat for Humanity, I would have asserted that my motivation to work as a community-based architect stemmed solely from a desire to serve, to work for others. While this idea still compels me, the Department of Corrections crew has prompted me to refine it. I am not purely building for someone; I am building with many people, from many different backgrounds and contexts that are refreshingly different from my own. And though we have structured our lives around a project, a physical assemblage of materials and processes, we build much deeper things than the tangible, the architectural—we build relationships and a community that is as beautiful as it is improbable.

(Author's note: since this writing, Jake was up for parole and subsequently denied.  The board concluded that Jake had the potential to "re-offend."  He will spend another year in prison before being once more eligible for parole).