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Auction proceeds aid Hondurans Mail Tribune / Steve Johnson Little house on the ... parking lot? Yes, it�s going up in front of the Medford Armory this week and will be auctioned off by the local home builders association Sept. 17 to raise money for Hondurans left homeless by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Here, Roy Eutsey of Paradise Builders works on framing the walls of the 672-square-foot cottage. Building a house to give hurricane victims a home By Dani Dodge Members of the Home Builders Association of Jackson County were hard at work on Labor Day � reading plans, pounding nails and putting up walls. But they weren�t building a cute little cottage for double-time holiday pay. They were working without a paycheck so some families in Honduras can move from cardboard and tar-paper shacks into real homes. "Home builders are saying, �Hey, this community has been good to us and we want to give something back,� " said Randy Jones, the general contractor for the project. "We are just doing our little part in these little communities." For the next week and a half, more than 100 construction workers from more than 40 companies will work on the 672-square-foot Craftsman-style house in the parking lot of the Medford Armory atop wood blocks and steel I-beams. The house will be auctioned off at 4 p.m. Sept. 17. The proceeds will benefit families in Honduras whose homes were wiped out by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Between the auction and a raffle, the home builders hope to give World Vision Honduras $90,000 � enough for about 30 Honduran homes. The houses will be placed on land purchased by John Duke, the owner of the Superior Athletic clubs. The project is a first in the nation, said Jones, a board member and secretary for the association. The construction of the upscale home will be finished by Sept. 14, just in time for the Jackson County Home Builders Association Southern Oregon Home Show, Sept. 15-17. The home then will be transported to the successful bidder�s home site. "It�ll be like a guest house behind someone�s main home, or a rental behind someone�s house," Jones said. "In the county, it could be someone�s office or workout room; for a business it could be a sales office. If someone has a plot of land near a creek, it could be a little recreational home. "We designed it so it could serve a multitude of purposes." The cottage is no shanty here: It will have hardwood flooring, solid surface Corian counter tops and a central vacuum system. "This is really, really high-end stuff," Jones said. "Someone will get a really fine house." The home builders will not only build the foundation and move the house there, they�ll even obtain the building permits to make it all legal. The home builders membership is underwriting all costs involved in the auction so that 100 percent of the money raised will go to survivors of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras. In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch left 2 million people homeless, destroyed 80 percent of the nation�s agriculture, severely damaged 70 percent of the infrastructure and left 20,000 people dead or missing. Many who lost their homes still have no permanent shelter. The idea for the auction was born after World Vision Northwest director Ray Shutte got stood up by someone in Medford a little over a month ago. He called Jones to see if he was free for lunch. Shutte asked Jones, general manager of Mahar Homes Inc., if his company couldn�t donate some money to help build a few homes in Honduras. Jones came up with a better idea: building a house and auctioning off. Once he got the home builders behind him, a nationwide example was in the works. "We originally made a commitment to cover five homes, because I didn�t know how far it would go," Jones said. "As it�s grown, it�s been embraced." Twenty-six-year-old Honduran native Lilian Johnson is the ambassador for the project. The Eagle Point woman moved to Southern Oregon in 1996 after she married Dan Johnson, the founder of Operation Shoebox. She�ll go back to the Central American country to present the families with the homes. World Vision is helping 120 families in two Honduran cities: Hatillo and Trapiche. Both towns were wiped out in the floods. The families will help in the building, and learn the building trade at the same time. "Their villages disappeared," Johnson said. "The land was bought somewhere else for them to rebuild their lives." The association also will hold a raffle. Purchase of a $5 ticket will build one square foot of finished home in Honduras. Among the items being raffled are a flat-screen TV, a digital camera and a Hawaiian vacation for two. And for those construction workers and framers who normally would have spent Labor Day luxuriating in their hot tubs or hiking with their kids before the start of school, the project is worth it. "People that�s got it should give it," said Jeff Robinson, owner of Paradise Builders, as he oversaw the early framing stages Monday morning. "You just can�t expect all take and no give." For more information or for silent-bid request forms, call 773-2874. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA