Yuba melting pot of homes

They speak Hmong, Spanish, Cantonese, Punjabi, or Urdu. Many speak no English at all.

The eight families building houses together in Mercy Housing's sprawling self-help community in Linda bring a melting pot of experience to the American dream of home ownership.

And somehow, says Hamid Rasheed, 20, whose five-bedroom house is almost set for sheet rock, everyone manages to communicate.

"We have really good fun with that," he says of the largely charades-based conversations that take place each week.

As part of the agreement that Rasheed and others who qualified for this low-income housing project have signed on to, neighbors join in on labor-intensive tasks like building the basic frames for the houses.

"One of our main goals is to build a community," says Fidel Herrera, a community loan specialist for Mercy Housing. The nonprofit group, which formerly went by the name Rural California Housing Corp., has 101 lots in the subdivision, called Sierra Vista.

The first 30 homes were completed at the end of 2007. Each self-help building group consists of eight to 10 homeowner families.

"A nice neighborhood is the thing I care about most," says Rasheed, who lives in Live Oak with his parents, siblings and other family members — 12 altogether.

That Live Oak home also was part of a Mercy Housing project, completed in 2004. Rasheed helped his uncle build the house shortly after he arrived in the U.S. from Pakistan.

He spoke no English and did not understand much either, he says, "but it wasn't that bad. Anyone can understand a tape measure and nailing with a hammer."

During that project, his English improved, and he learned quite a bit of Spanish as well.

The home-in-progress, which is expected to be completed in a month, is one that he and his father qualified for together. Rasheed works at a Burger King in Chico and attends Butte College; his father works for a wood products company in Marysville.

Work on the house began in October.

Rasheed's neighbor, Lee Lor, 39, says he is finding the slow pace of work on the homes somewhat stressful.

"We kind of fell behind here a little bit," he says of what he heard would be a 10-month build period. Lor and his wife came to the area 10 years ago from a refugee camp in Thailand. Their families fled Communist-backed forces in their native Laos when they were just children.

Now living in Olivehurst, the couple and their six children spend several hours each day at the site in Linda.

"This will be new neighbors and new everything," Lor says. "We've never done anything like this before."

His children all are under the age of 16, so are not old enough to participate in building, according to Mercy's rules.

On Friday, they chased one another in the new empty street in front of their home and chattered in their native Hmong.

From the house across from the Lor family, the sounds of a Spanish-language radio station accompanies several working hammers.

Like Rasheed, Lor says the version of English used in their unique community "is kind of crazy."

"We use only simple words to make sure everybody understands," he says, smiling. "It's a little complicated."

The families have agreed that today will be "fence day" — the single shift during which backyard wooden fences will be erected.

Electrical wiring and insulation work has kept the families working independently, for the most part, these last few weeks. So the collective fencing project will be something of a reunion.

"We all know each other now," Rasheed says, "so it's a piece of cake. We'll be done by lunch time."

Rasheed says he likes the cooperative aspect of their housing project, and the mix of cultures in his own group.

"Our kids will play together and learn to respect other cultures," he says.

"They'll learn it's not just, 'do it yourself,'" he says. "We work together."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com