HCCF Grant Funds Home Repair Week for Residents in Central Indy

We’re proud to see the impact of our community partnerships recognized in the local news. Recently featured in Current, CrossRoads Church at Westfield’s Home Repair Week showcased how youth leadership and community support—powered in part by a grant from the Hamilton County Community Foundation—can transform lives. Original publication: https://youarecurrent.com/2025/07/01/teens-on-a-mission-crossroads-church-at-westfield-completes-home-repair-week/

More than 300 high school students from across the nation recently spent a week in Hamilton County and Indianapolis to lend a helping hand to homeowners in need.

Home Repair Week — organized by Group Mission Trips of Colorado with local support of CrossRoads Church at Westfield — is a Christian mission where teens provide free residential home repairs for seniors, low-income families and veterans. The local initiative ran June 15 to June 21.

The teens spent a week in mid-June building and repairing wheelchair ramps; constructing decks; installing mobile home skirting; and painting homes in Westfield, Sheridan, Noblesville, Cicero and north Indianapolis. It was the third year the program was offered through CrossRoads. Participants spent the week on location at homes and lodged at Westfield Middle School.

CrossRoads Church at Westfield Lead Pastor Eric Lohe said the mission is a way to assist those who want to stay in their homes but need help with expensive repairs.

“Because finances are tough for many, we do not check bank statements or ask financial questions,” he said. “We just want to serve our neighbors.”

Lohe said the church received 87 applications for repairs and were able to approve 44 homeowners for assistance.

“They get to go out on Monday and work the rest of the week for people they don’t know, but they get to know them really quickly because they’re working together and doing all of that,” he said. “We locate the sites and the residents, and then we come out and interview them, and then if we feel like this is the place, this is where we need to be because of the situation, we then have a crew come out to draw plans so that we then can order materials and have them all delivered before the students go to work.”

Megan Riley, 18, traveled to Westfield from Akron, Ohio, to participate in the program. She was part of a crew that performed interior and exterior work at a home on Eagletown Road in Westfield, including rebuilding a portion of the deck, window replacement and painting.

“Originally we were going to be taking out the rotting boards, but as we were removing them, we ended up finding way more than we thought were rotted, and the foundation was rotting too, so we ended up taking everything out,” she said. “ It took us longer than we thought. We pulled all of the boards out and then did some concrete work. The joists were rotted, so we did a lot of replacement, and I don’t really think any of us had any carpentry skills whatsoever.”

Homeowners Steven and Natalie Silver inherited their home from Steven’s grandmother, who lived in the small ranch from 1967 until her death in 2020. Natalie Silver saw a flyer for the program while participating in programming at CrossRoads and applied for assistance. She said even after they were accepted, they weren’t expecting the scope of the work to be so broad.

“I’m overwhelmed by how much help we’ve gotten, and the kids are great,” she said. “They were really sweet, and it’s been nice to just have them here. It’s been great. We’ve really enjoyed the kids helping us. They just get in and do everything and it’s amazing. It’s been a blessing. We’re happy with everything.”

Leonard and Julia Jones of Noblesville applied to the program when they received a flyer in the mail. The couple said assistance sprucing up their mobile home on Cicero Road couldn’t come at a better time.

“I had cancer surgery and radiation and some ongoing treatments,” Leonard Jones said. “My wife has arthritis in her feet. So, we’ve been basically living off my Social Security for a while and we basically had to file bankruptcy at the beginning of this year, because my medical bills were phenomenal. So, we’d done all we could do by ourselves. We’ve lived here for going on 12 years and I fixed up the inside but didn’t get a chance to get outside.”

Jones said when some trees were removed from the front of the property, he didn’t like how his home looked compared to some of the other homes in the subdivision.

“I was thinking one day as I was pulling in, ‘We’re the most unsightly one here on the front row.’ Everybody else has vinyl siding, they’re newer mobile homes, things like that,” he said.

Home Repair Week crews completed several projects for the Joneses, including adding new vinyl skirting to their mobile home; painting the outside and the roof; and building a new wooden staircase for the rear exit.

“We’ve been so thankful for our particular crew,” Jones said. “They’re the greatest. They come in, they say, ‘Thank you’ a lot. We set up a canopy every day for them and told them if they need anything, like extra water, to just let us know.”

The total cost for home repair materials for the weeklong mission was $48,500. Money was raised through a grant from the Hamilton County Community Foundation, fundraising efforts by the church and the program participants.

ABOUT HOME REPAIR WEEK

Central Indiana is one of 14 communities participating in Home Repair Week through Colorado-based Group Mission Trips. More than 15,000 people participate in missions in 22 states every summer.

“I have been attending these camps since 2005 working as staff and a volunteer,” CrossRoads Church at Westfield Lead Pastor Eric Lohe said. “Our church has sent many students and adults to these home repair camps in the past and are sending 18 high schoolers to a group workcamp in Middletown, Ohio this summer.”

Home Repair Week with CrossRoads Church at Westfield was funded through a donation by the Community Foundation of Hamilton County and church and participant fundraising efforts, with assistance from Westfield Washington Schools, Rotary Club of Westfield, Culver’s and the Westfield Lion’s Club.

Learn more at crchurch.org.