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Volunteers with the Fuller Center for Housing repair the roof of Ken Huff's home in Orem on Saturday, June 17, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Volunteers with the Fuller Center for Housing stand in the front yard of Ken Huff's home in Orem on Saturday, June 17, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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When a single cloud reflected the colors of a rainbow above Ken Huff’s home on Saturday, his children, Mel Stevens and Christian Huff, called it a sign.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” Stevens said to her brother. “Mom’s here.”

Ken Huff, 79, lost his hands in an accident 40 years ago and has since gone blind. When he still had vision in one eye, Stevens said, he would work on his lawn, but losing sight in both made it impossible. When his lawn fell into dis-repair, Huff was taken to court and the judge, rather than give him a fine, got in touch with nonprofits to help the Orem resident.

On Saturday, Huff’s children joined the Fuller Center for Housing as a group of volunteers repaired their father’s roof and made other repairs to the lawn and home. With nothing but gratitude for the organization and the volunteers, Stevens and Christian Huff were especially emotional seeing the support for their father on the anniversary of their mother’s death in 1993.

“It’s overwhelming. It’s been 40 years since his accident. Our family’s been through a lot,” Stevens said. “I pulled up this morning and all these people are here. I’m going, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Really, this is happening.”

The Fuller Center for Housing is a nationwide organization, splitting from Habitat for Humanity in the mid-2000s, with four branches in Utah. When Ann Coleman started volunteering with the group, though, there were none. After only a few years, the Fuller Center is in Utah County, Salt Lake City, Price and Cache Valley with a focus on helping low-income homeowners do repairs and other necessary work.

While the group is a “Christian organization,” Coleman said, volunteers and recipients of all faiths and faith backgrounds are welcome.

Huff’s home is the 68th one worked on by the Fuller Center in its three and half years in Utah County. Over that time, Coleman said, 500 different volunteers have worked with the organization. After spending four hours on Huff’s roof and yard, everyone packed up for a small lunch break on a neighboring church lawn. Sharing the meal was Huff’s family, volunteers and several past recipients of the group’s work.

While some of Saturday’s volunteers are local to Utah County, others made their way just to help. The group worked last week in Price and on Friday rode bicycles the 82 miles to Spanish Fork. They slept each night on the floor of the Provo Community Congregational United Church of Christ before turning around Monday and riding another 96 miles out to Duschene.

Called the Fuller Center Bike Adventure, the different rides serve as fundraisers for the organization. According to Neil Mullikin, one of the riders and a Georgia resident, this group of riders has raised around $240,000 for the organization to continue its work. It’s also become something of a recruiting tool. Coleman herself first connected with the Fuller Center by joining the bike adventure.

“What I’ve seen year after year is a transition in hearts and lives. It starts off as a bike ride … then they realize it’s so much bigger than that, that it becomes about the build, it becomes about the communities that we go into,” Mullikin said.

The acts of service, both in people’s local community and ones across the country, bring a better understanding of people, he added. Coleman connected it to an acknowledgement of prejudice and working to get rid of any pre-dispositions about people. She argues that attitudes about low-income people “looking for the handouts” are not based in the reality of most people. Sometimes, she said, a family needs a “hand up” when going through a difficult time.

“Once people can break through the ice and actually get out and have a conversation, you will realize that a lot of us are very similar, even the families that we serve,” Mullikin said.

The Fuller Center pays for the project, time and materials upfront with an agreement that the homeowner will pay what they can on a monthly basis.

“They know it’s not to pay us back. It’s to help the next homeowner,” Coleman said. “Somebody else came before them that made that home repair for them and then they get to help somebody else.”

Most referrals to the group come through social media, word of mouth and assistance from other nonprofits. People in need of a repair then call the center and need to be prequalified by Coleman.

To be prequalified, the person needs to be a homeowner — “With a renter, the property gets improved and the landlord increases the rent,” Coleman said — and fall into the low-income brackets. Members of the project committee then determine if the project is feasible, find volunteers who can help and prioritize recipients based on need. The ability to pay also comes into play.

“We look at ‘what’s your income, what are your expenses.’ If there’s any gap in that, we’re good. We have people who paid us $10 a month. We’re OK with that,” Coleman said.

If people are overspending, the Fuller Center connects them with other organizations that offer financial planning classes and assistance.

While the large projects take time, energy and planning, some smaller projects are just as rewarding. Coleman recalled an 89-year-old woman, a rancher who raised seven children after her husband died, who just needed help cleaning her garage. It took three hours for the seven volunteers to go through everything.

“When I wake up and it’s a Fuller workday, I know it’s gonna be a good day,” Coleman said. “I don’t know what it’s gonna be. But I know it’s gonna be a good day, because we’re bringing people together.”