Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood join Habitat for Humanity

Two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of New Orleans, country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood decided to add some star power to a week-long home-building effort led by Habitat for Humanity and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.

Celebrities getting involved in one-off charitable acts is nothing new, but what the cast couple didn’t expect was to find the former US President and First Lady arguing like every other married couple on the site.

“They were arguing about the measurement of a board. They just didn’t get it done,” Brooks said Monday, recalling his first appearance alongside the Carters, which he found refreshingly normal. “Finally she just threw her hands up and said, ‘Okay. You can cut it again, but it will still be too short.’”

The Carters made history through their modesty when they slept in the basement of a church during their first construction in New York City 38 years ago. They were no more pretentious – and no less active – in New Orleans in 2007.

Carrying on a tradition

Inspired by their hands-on volunteer work, Brooks and Yearwood have participated in the Work Project’s construction efforts almost annually for the past 17 years, reuniting with the former first family to simultaneously build dozens of homes for low- to moderate-income homebuyers around the world. The country stars continued the tradition without her 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 grow up, you tell anyone who will listen, you always want to be a part of something bigger than anything you can do alone,” Brooks said during a speech to a tent full Media cameras press event Monday afternoon at the construction site on St. Paul’s East Side.

The impetus for building their latest work project is “The Heights,” the development on the 112-acre former Hillcrest Golf Course property on Arlington Avenue, where Habitat for Humanity is building the first 30 of approximately 174 affordable Habitat homes.

Residences range from four-family homes to single-family homes and will be sold to future Twin Cities Habitat customers at lower than usual interest rates and below market prices.

“Not just a core urban problem”

The construction site — the largest in Twin Cities Habitat history — was a hive of activity with about 1,000 volunteers on Monday, the first of five days of work that will include a total of about 4,000 participants, many from out of state.

According to the Minnesota Housing Partnership, while wages have risen in recent years, rising housing costs have far outpaced the increase. Owners’ incomes increased by 2% in the last five years; Property values ​​rose 19% over the same period. A household would need to earn a total annual salary of $98,500 to afford a median-priced home in Minnesota, a threshold that widens the racial gap in homeownership rates in the state. About 77% of white families in the state own their own home, compared to 29% of Black families.

“This is not just a core urban issue,” said Chris Coleman, president and CEO of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, during Monday’s media event. “This is a problem in rural communities as well as urban and suburban communities. … Polaris or Digi-Key (electronics) cannot grow in northern Minnesota if employees don’t have housing.”

That sentiment was echoed by Jonathan Reckford, executive director of Habitat for Humanity International, who said communities across the country are struggling with housing costs.

“Ultimately it’s all about land and funding,” Reckford said. “And if you look at the gap between what the average family can afford and the current cost of building a home, it is the largest in modern history. … In many of our major metropolitan areas, Habitat is joining or establishing large, mixed-income communities.”

“Decision-making power and self-determination”

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who picked up the drill and pitched in with construction Monday, called homeownership an important path to building wealth and stability for low-income families.

“When the dean of my business school said the word ‘justice,’ she meant … the right to decision-making power and self-determination,” the mayor said. “Every hammer blow we hear is the sound of a family moving into a home with equity. … We need more housing units.”

Yearwood said the Habitat builds have become a week that she and Brooks look forward to every year. The Work Project took them twice 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 cry the whole way to the site,” Yearwood said. “And then we came back the second year… you just cry a little less because you see improvement, even though it’s hard. My favorite part was going back to the site and…seeing the homeowners, seeing the light in their eyes and seeing how well they were doing. Everyone deserves this chance.”