Seemingly small projects can make life-changing differences for homeowners
A wheelchair ramp. A repaired roof. A safer bathroom. New steps, doors or windows.
They may not have the visual impact of a brand-new house, but modest home repairs can make an enormous difference — especially for elderly homeowners and people living with disabilities. Sometimes, they can mean the difference between remaining safely and independently in a beloved home and having to leave it behind.
That is the idea behind The Fuller Center for Housing’s Greater Blessing program, one of the final initiatives launched by founder Millard Fuller before his unexpected death in 2009.
Greater Blessing projects typically address critical health and safety needs with repairs costing less than $5,000. Homeowners must own and occupy their homes and demonstrate financial need, while volunteers generally provide much of the labor.
Unlike homeowners who partner with The Fuller Center to build or rehabilitate a home through a no-profit-made, no-interest-charged mortgage, Greater Blessing homeowners have no legal obligation to repay the cost of the work.
They are simply encouraged to give back as they are able.
The program takes its name from Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Millard believed that principle should apply not only to volunteers and donors but also to the people The Fuller Center serves.
“My thought is that charity home repair programs are good, but they are deficient theologically because if you believe that giving is more blessed than receiving, the recipients in such programs are denied the greater blessing,” he said. “In our work, we do not want to deny that greater blessing and that is why we give the recipients the opportunity to give something back.”
There are no loan documents and no legal repayment requirement. Homeowners are instead encouraged to make voluntary payments based upon what they can afford. Those payments stay in their community to help another homeowner.
Sometimes that spirit of paying it forward takes on a life of its own.
Bardonna Zollinger connected with The Fuller Center for Housing of Utah County in 2022. Now 90, she knows firsthand how important a little help can be for an older homeowner determined to remain independent.
After raising seven children, working a dry farm and ranch in Idaho and later serving as a registered nurse in Utah, she was accustomed to hard work and independence.
But maintaining her Orem, Utah, home had become more than she could handle herself.
“I needed some help here, and at 90 years old, there’s just a lot you can’t do,” she said. “I called them, and they came — and they were just wonderful.”
For Zollinger, the repairs meant far more than fixing things around the house.
“Nobody wants to leave their home,” she said. “They’re familiar with it. They feel comfortable. … It’s so much easier to stay in your home. I’m so impressed there’s an organization that cares enough about older people to help them.”
Zollinger soon referred her friend Marge, who needed repairs of her own. Marge was so grateful that she became a monthly donor to the local Fuller Center covenant partner.
Later, when Marge needed grab bars installed in her bathroom, Zollinger offered to pay for the materials. Tanner Glass & Hardware instead donated the materials and installation, so Zollinger gave the money she had set aside to The Fuller Center of Utah County to help someone else.
“I can’t do the work myself anymore, but if I can make a contribution, that’s what I want to do,” Zollinger said.
It was the Greater Blessing coming full circle.
Perhaps no project demonstrates the impact of Greater Blessing more clearly than one of its most common — a wheelchair ramp.
To someone whose mobility has been limited by age, injury or illness, a simple ramp can mean freedom and the ability to remain safely at home.
Tom Tebo, former director of the River Cities Fuller Center for Housing in Marinette, Wisconsin, saw that firsthand when volunteers built a ramp for an elderly woman who had been getting down her steps by clinging to her son’s back because her daughter could no longer safely maneuver her wheelchair down them.
“She was in tears,” Tebo said. “It’s a joyous occasion when we give them that mobility and freedom.”
Tebo said the covenant partner discovered a tremendous need for ramps as it sought ways to help its aging community.
“The wheelchair ramp projects are able to get an individual out of the nursing home, out of the care center, out of the rehab center and back in their properties where they often do better,” he said. “It gives them the independence to be in their own home.”
The projects also can strengthen an entire community. River Cities has partnered with local high schools, including students in an Advanced Woods class who pre-assembled sections of a ramp before helping see the project through.
“When they go to the build site, they get to see the family reap the benefits of their hard work,” Tebo said. “Anything that gets our youth involved in community service is such a good thing.”
Building new homes remains an essential part of The Fuller Center’s work, but building a better world does not always require starting from the ground up.
Sometimes it means repairing a roof so rain stays outside. Installing grab bars so an elderly homeowner can safely take a bath. Building a ramp so someone can come home from a rehabilitation center — or simply get through their own front door without depending on someone else.
And sometimes the person who receives that help turns around and helps the next person.
That was exactly what Millard Fuller had in mind.
The repair may be modest.
The blessing can be anything but.
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