Students make habit of building habitats

For the rest of this week, students will sleep outside the William Pitt Union in an… For the rest of this week, students will sleep outside the William Pitt Union in an 8-by-12-foot wooden shack.

With no bathroom, no carpet, no couch and no windows, students with Habitat for Humanity will endure temporary discomfort to demonstrate a social problem: substandard housing.

“The point is not to be comfortable,” President Nicole Myers said.

“The point is to demonstrate how it would be to live in substandard housing,” Secretary Miranda Spiro added.

During the week of April 4, other chapters will hold similar activities as part of an international drive to get their messages out.

Act!Speak!Build! Week, formerly known as HabiFest, seeks to “raise awareness about the issues surrounding substandard housing and influencing public policy so affordable housing is available to everyone,” according to Habitat For Humanity’s Web site.

Since 1996, Pitt’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity has sponsored the week of awareness, which they chose to call HabiFest this year despite the national name change. For the Pitt community that has seen it in the past, student advocates have erected the shack in sunny or rainy conditions.

Along with its drive to raise awareness, Pitt’s chapter will also campaign for $50,000 to build two houses an ocean apart.

In Washington County, Pa., students hope to build a house that will be significantly cheaper than those built by contractors; in Tanzania, the money will go toward constructing another house.

As a non-profit service organization, Habitat for Humanity spends most weekends helping to build houses around Pittsburgh. And for Steven Burch, the vice president of Pitt’s chapter, the reasons for such volunteerism address social causes as well as satisfy personal priorities.

“I believe that, because of my position — I was born a middle-class American– there’s a lot of people that America has taken advantage of,” he said.

“And that wasn’t right. I feel like I’ve benefited from that,” he added.