A couple of years back, home appliance maker Whirlpool started working with Habitat for Humanity, promising by 2011 to put either money or, say, a washing machine in every house HfH built -- around the world, no kiddin'. Till then it's sponsoring, through a project called Building Blocks, Habitat construction in various cities -- beginning in 2006 in Nashville, then this year in Guadalupe, Arizona, where Whirlpool and Habitat for Humanity partnered on nine new houses built in five days.
This morning, Habitat for Humanity announced that next year's recipient of the Building Blocks sponsorship is -- you guessed it -- Dallas. Specifically, the homes will be built in the Frazier Courts area neat Fair Park -- a long-ignored, long-decaying area where the Dallas Housing Authority's building new low-income housing and where Don Williams' Foundation for Community Empowerment tried to clean up the neighborhood using eminent domain till the neighborhood said, in short, "Unh-unh."
Says Connie Boyd, Director of Development for Dallas Habitat for Humanity: "Whirlpool saw that this partnership would make a large impact in the Dallas Community and in the historically significant neighborhood of Frazier Courts in South Dallas. We echo Whirlpool's challenge for others to 'join us' and become bold partners in transforming neglected neighborhoods, rebuilding communities and strengthening Dallas." As a, um, bonus or something? Reba McEntire's coming too. --Robert Wilonsky
