COLUMBUS, MS – Courtesy of the Dispatch

A replacement home for one its resident, 89-year-old Mary Bush, had to abandon and demolish five years ago due to mold concerns, is taking shape up on 12th Avenue North. The Columbus-Lowndes Habitat for Humanity, with the help of local businesses, just put a roof on the new structure. Kathy Arinder, Director of CL Habitat, says that the home should hopefully be move-in ready some time in June.

Steel Dynamics Inc, Mississippi Steel Processing, Magnum Metals of Nettleton, and Ervin Brothers Roofing all worked together to donate the roofing material, paint, cutting, and installation labor to the house, and it’s designed to last – even the paint job has a 50-year warranty on it! Once completed, this will mark the 49th HFH home built since it was chartered in 1990. “This is definitely a first for us,” Arinder said. “It’s something that just never was in our budget. So when Steel Dynamics came to us and told us what they wanted to do, we were thrilled.”

SDI donated 10,000 pounds of 29-gauge roll steel in total, which should be enough for HFH to roof three to four more houses.

The homeowner, Bush, had to leave her longtime home after lung damage caused by a mold infestation put her in the hospital for two weeks; the old building was condemned and destroyed roughly five years ago, and Bush has been living in a rental ever since. “A voice told me to go down to (the Habitat office),” she said. “I didn’t know nothing about it. But it was the Lord telling me. . . “So I went down and we talked and talked,” she added. “The lady said, ‘Let me see what we can do.'”

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