Vern Furness was sick of making rich people richer. Building
mansions bored him, and shoddy low-income projects depressed
him.
Gilroy – Vern Furness was sick of making rich people richer. Building mansions bored him, and shoddy low-income projects depressed him.
“I’d build these really beautiful $2 million homes,” he recalled, “and then we’d build the low-income homes and they’d look like dog houses.”
Amid a booming for-profit construction market, the single father opted out, and went to work “for the white hat guys” – literally. At nonprofit South County Housing’s new Cannery project, framers in white hard-hats nail wood planks together, as mixed-income townhouses spring up on the 12-acre site. To most people, it looks like any construction site, but these builders work for more than the bottom line. Their company, South County Community Builders, was established in 1994, a wholly-controlled affiliate of South County Housing with the construction chops of any market-rate builder.
“At some point, we realized: We’re a single-family home builder,” said Jan Lindenthal, SCH’s director of housing and construction. “The things we’d been doing intuitively needed to be more formal: a professional Customer Service program, quality control on our buildings, for example.”
Furness strolled past the workers, scrutinizing the alignment of the beams. As field superintendent, he’s responsible for keeping construction moving, setting deadlines to trim costly delays.
“I’d put these homes up against any custom home out on the market,” said John Van Dyke, construction manager. “We swing for the fence all the time – and our batting average is pretty high.”
On a project such as the Cannery, which aims to transform the space vacated by Gilroy’s old cannery into a livable mixed-income community, Van Dyke and Furness do more than build homes. The project’s vision hinges on the homes themselves. Combating ugly myths about low-income housing – and low-income people – SCH aims to create quality houses, no matter the price. If the low-income homes that sell for $250,000 look shabby alongside the $400,000 homes, SCH’s vision of a diverse community suffers.
“Just because you live in a lower-priced home doesn’t mean it should be substandard,” said Jack Foley, communications manager. Healthy neighborhoods, he said, “begin with putting people in a place they feel proud of.”
Inside the Cannery homes, there’s little difference between the higher-end houses and their less-expensive counterparts, said Seth Capron, construction program manager. Countertops and floor finishes are identical. Eco-friendly touches like cellulose insulation and high-efficiency fixtures are present in both. The only major difference, they say, is the homes’ overall size.
“We’re cost-conscious,” said Capron, “but design and quality are most important.”
Because the builders don’t skimp on quality, efficiency is crucial. Van Dyke cites SCCB’s “aggressive schedules,” which hold sub-contractors to their word. If an electrician lags, he or she will have to work around the next-in-line, sharing space on the construction site. On those timetables, the Cannery homes are completed in four to six months, Capron said.
“They play well together, which is a big deal in construction,” Furness said. “It keeps conflict down when people realize we’re doing a good thing. You can’t buy that.”
The results are impressive: Out of 200 units built, only three errors turned up, said Capron.
“When other builders hear that,” he said, “they don’t believe it.”
Down the street, at Ashford’s Heirlooms, Steve Ashford says he’s impressed by the builders’ speed. Ashford works as a contractor with another builder, and also as a Parks and Recreation Commissioner. The close-set buildings worry him slightly – Ashford would prefer to see larger yards, for kids to play in – but the buildings are “nice-looking,” he says, “and Johnny [Van Dyke] does a great job running those projects.
“He knows his business. They shop materials right, and they’re smart,” Ashford said, “and they’re after their sub[contractor]s to get it done fast.”
As construction soars in South County, SCCB and its sub-contractors could easily cash in on other projects, moving from one site to the next. But the ideal of a tight-knit, multi-income community has won their allegiance, particularly on the Cannery site, literally built out of the former factory: 35,000 tons of recycled concrete from the cannery has been ground up, to form the project’s roads. Construction workers talk about their parents, who once worked on the canning line, as they hammer together more than 200 homes.
“Part of the cannery will always be here,” said Furness.
