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LANETT — The Chattahoochee Fuller Center Project (CFCP) will dedicate two new houses at 6 p.m. EDT on Saturday. The two new homes are located on East 3rd Avenue in Lanett’s Plant City neighborhood and are part of a new senior housing program for the CFCP. They are also the second and third projects of eight that are currently planned for this year. The CFCP is continuing a building boom. The organization has built 32 new homes over the past five years.

At the start of the year, CFCP Executive Director Kim Roberts did not expect much in the way of building projects in 2022.

“After the tornado relief work in Beauregard in 2019 and the COVID pandemic that followed, I thought this would be a time to pull back a little,” she said. “But, we must keep in mind that God has a plan, too, and his plan may not always jive with yours.”

The Beauregard experience opened some new doors for the CFCP to better serve the east Alabama-west Georgia region. An example of this is Auburn University’s Building Science Department coming forward to build two new tiny houses. The CFCP partnered with the Chambers County Circle of Care in a plan to locate these houses to serve as transitional homes for single moms with young children.

There was also an opportunity to build two new homes in the fall of 2022. Concerned about a looming supply chain crisis, CFCP President Curt Johnson went ahead to order the materials needed for such a build.

“Dr. Rick Kuhn then called to tell us he was retiring to move to the mountains but wanted to head up one more build before leaving town,” Roberts said. “We have a Greater Blessings project planned for the year. It’s in response to a request that was made to us by some concerned citizens to see if we could help Mr. Zil Maxi. We’ve agreed and have another project on our schedule. So much for the idea of pulling back.”

Kuhn and a group of volunteers from the Church of the Highlands in Auburn did much of the work on the two new senior homes in Plant City. Jessica Holmes and Alexandria Williams will be living in them.

“Between the rising prices for materials and some of the issues we’ve seen with some of our older residents, we decided to try out a new project this year,” Johnson said. “These senior homes and the lots they are on are smaller than our conventional CFCP homes but may be ideal for older people. The goal is to provide a functional home for one or two residents. It’s a smaller space but with less upkeep and maintenance.”

With the work that was done on the two new CFCP houses, Kuhn headed up a framing crew from the Church of the Highlands.

Johnson added that the CFCP expects to dedicate the tiny houses and a Greater Blessings Project for Mr. Maxi sometime this summer.

“This fall, we will be hosting a Millard Fuller Legacy Build in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Lanett,” Johnson said. “We will be building two more new homes. We see this as a fitting tribute to Mr. Fuller, who was born and grew up in Lanett and went on to be the founder of Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing.The Jackson Heights area was the site of the first Millard Fuller Legacy Build in 2009. Those new homes that were built, plus a number of others that followed, greatly improved the neighborhood.”