USC partnership gives homes a new life

A “100% U.S. Army disabled veteran” currently undergoing treatment for two forms of cancer, Edward Wong is no stranger to resilience. So, when it comes to home maintenance, the challenges he faces pale in comparison to past adversities. 

For Wong, the home has always been a place of particular importance. At 74 years old, he lives alone in Crenshaw, about three miles west of University Park Campus. His house predates him, at “80 some odd years old.” His roots in Crenshaw go even further back – Wong’s 92-year-old mother has lived in his childhood home, only two blocks away, since 1953. 

Despite the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center’s attempt to get him to relocate or sell his home, Wong remains insistent. 

 “If I have to die on my patio, I wish to do it that way,” he said.

Wong has put those words into action – taking part in the Handyworker program run by the L.A. Housing Department, which provides minor home repairs for low-income residents. Through the program, Wong had his patio rebuilt and painted. 

After the Handyworker program concluded, Wong received a phone call out of the blue from his now “go-to brother and sister” – Steven Bradley and Zeeda Daniele from the L.A. affiliate of Rebuilding Together — a nonprofit organization that offers no-cost home repairs for low-income households — which has a long-standing partnership with the USC Davis School of Gerontology. 

After the closing of the organization’s original L.A. affiliate, Jon Pynoos, professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Fall Prevention Center of Excellence, served as a member of the steering committee for the Rebuilding Together affiliate.

Bradley and Daniele, who serve as the executive director and program manager, respectively, told Wong he was selected as one of the first homeowners to partake in the L.A. program.  

What lay ahead was “no little Mickey Mouse Job,” Wong said. Beginning Jan. 20, the Rebuilding Together team engaged in what Wong called “heavy-duty plumbing” — including replacing an entire toilet, installing new faucets in the bathtub and breaking down tile walls to get to pipes. 

Pragmatism runs core to Rebuilding Together’s operations. Many of the homes that the organization works on have seen no repairs for a decade, even two or three decades in some cases. Daniele said the highest income she has seen for a homeowner served by the Rebuilding Together affiliate is $36,000. 

Because of the constrained resources available — Daniele said the program could “spend every single dollar on five clients” during the beginning of their operation — the team has had to allocate their resources and time for the greatest net impact. Daniele’s experience at Fannie Mae, where she worked on real estate and housing lending for more than 16 years, has prepared her for this fiscal discipline well — a requisite for running events such as the Kickoff to Rebuild, an annual event sanctioned by the Super Bowl to repair homes in host cities. 

When it came to the Kickoff to Rebuild, the greater effort of the surrounding community came to light. Nine volunteers, donning T-shirts from Lowe’s — a sponsor of the Kickoff to Rebuild — came to replace all of Wong’s plants with a colorful new assortment. 

Wong also met NFL wide receiver Robert Woods, a player for the L.A. Rams, who participated in the event as a Lowe’s volunteer.

Rebuilding Together’s partnership with the Davis School was critical for the Kickoff to Rebuild event, which focused on neighborhoods within a five-mile radius of the University Park Campus. Leon Watts III, a graduate of the Davis School and a learning and development specialist at the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence, directly served as a site captain, putting his 40 years of home repair experience into action.  

“They had six hours, all together, set up to do the work,” Watts said. “My crew was able to do it in three hours.”

Reflecting on the relationship between the Davis School and Rebuilding Together, Pynoos said the partnership is “complex, growing, rich.”

“We can take what we have learned in research and put it into practice and involve students in something very real, that improves, directly, the lives of older persons and persons with disabilities,” Pynoos said.

The Executive Certificate for Home Modification program, which Pynoos co-founded, has been core to Rebuilding Together and the Davis School’s partnership. The program, which offers holistic instruction on home modification, is offered at a discounted rate to Rebuilding Together staff nationwide. 

Established in January 2020, the partnership has trained 48 Rebuilding Together contractors, according to the organization’s most recent figures in April 2021. 

Looking forward, Wong remains evangelical about the Rebuilding Together program. Despite his insistence, Wong’s mother — who was born in China — has been less receptive to the outside help Rebuilding Together offers. 

“Their generation is different from my generation,” Wong said, adding that “they don’t trust outsiders.”  

In the meantime, Wong focuses on those closer to his age, including his fellow veterans at the American Legion. And, one word still comes up when Wong talks about Daniele and Bradley — “godsend.” 

“They care about us old farts,” Wong said about the people behind the Kickoff to Rebuild. “Just like family.”