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"Blitz Builders" Helping Transform Homewood

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - As recently as Monday morning, a vacant house on Idlewild street in Homewood was unlivable but that's when the "blitz builders" went to work.

Most of the volunteer are not professional builders, but what they lack in expertise, they make up for in spirit.

Pastor Donn Ed, founder of Hosanna Industries, has teamed up with Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church and the Homewood Renaissance Association, to transform the abandoned house into a community center, and they'll do it in five days.

"It's what we call at Hosanna Industries a blitz rehab," says Reverend Ed. "We work with hundreds of volunteers on projects like this to compress the work schedule from what might be many weeks or months into a few days."

Pastor Eugene Blackwell and his wife Dina are leaders of the Homewood Renaissance Association. They say the refurbished house will be a blessing for the community.

"This is going to be a community house for the youth and families of Homewood," Dina Blackwell says. "It will be available to them to have a place to call their second home."

The center will open in the fall, but it will be finished by Friday.

"People have been walking up and down the street, they've been coming in and been giving their time and they've been working on the project as well," says Rev. Blackwell.

"So we're seeing the hope spread, and that's what we're really looking for."

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