SANTA CRUZ >> After a complicated, arduous three-and-a-half-year relationship, “Ruby” feels like a family member to Kendall Ronzano.
Ruby is a 117-square-foot trailer-mounted “tiny home” Ronzano began building at age 16 in her Westside backyard. Last week, Ruby figuratively rolled off into the sunset, on its way to Austin, Texas. The house will provide shelter to a homeless person or family in a budding supportive housing community there.
“Preferably, I wanted a place in Santa Cruz,” Ronzano said of plans to donate her tiny home. “Because I love the amount of support for our community, it’s been amazing. Even just the local industries.
“But, as soon as I found this organization, it really kind of appealed to me is I was watching Alan Graham’s videos, just his views and concepts, and he’s been working for the past 10 years on creating this plan,” Ronzano said. “One of the things that I’ve admired is they just have it together on that portion.”
The lessons Ronzano learned along the way, in addition to the practical skills needed to build a home single-handedly, were about community support and gender prejudices inherent in her chosen future career field of design in mechanical engineering.
Ronzano created her own website and construction blog, dubbed her effort Nerd Girl Homes blog, and solicited public donations of cash in materials amounting to nearly $16,000 from more than 200 people. Now a 20-year-old Dartmouth College sophomore, Ronzano said she has felt better equipped to progress professionally.
“It definitely taught me some lessons along the way. Something about keeping with it, getting back on the horse as fast as you can,” Ronzano said inside her recently finished project. “I received some emails along the way from people who thought I didn’t have the right intention. I was kind of surprised, like, ‘You don’t even know me.’ They thought that I was just trying to take people’s money, to build it for myself.”
The scaled-down pine-wood home, complete with porch and loft, consists of a living room, dining area, kitchen, bathroom, and two sleeping areas. The house has its own electrical and plumbing systems, and propane boat heater. In building it and dealing with some friends’ and neighbors skepticisms about the ability of a 16-year-old girl to build a home from scratch, family friend Victor “Chip” Bogaard III, president of Santa Cruz-based Bogard Construction, said that although he has always known that Ronzano is “a big thinker and is not afraid of anything,” he was somewhat surprised at her undertaking nearly four years ago.
“In terms of employer and general contractor, the fact that she took this on to do herself because she was curious is great,” Bogaard said. “If I see a resume that comes in my office and everything else is equal, that would stand out in my mind. Not even just for construction; for any field. (The house) is amazing. It’s great. It looks just like it should.”
Last week, Ronzano saw her plan through to near completion, as volunteers from the Austin-based Mobile Loaves and Fishes arrived in Santa Cruz to drive Ruby across the country to join the 27-acre homeless Community First! Village. The housing project will allow the home to be used at the site into perpetuity, even if its future family outgrows it, Ronzano said. The Community First! plan also provides supportive services for its residents, who are expected to work and pay rent, and has funding and oversight, Ronzano said. She said she first heard about the initiative through public referrals on her blog.
The impetus behind Ronzano’s project was to donate the completed and self-contained house to a homeless person or family in great need. Ronzano, the daughter of a contractor, said she has had a lifelong interest in figuring out how things work and compassion for homeless people she saw daily in her commute to York School in Monterey. Combining the two interests, Ronzano launched a project that would require more than 800 hours of her time, and which would chose to not apply toward high school community service requirements.
As the days were counting down on Ronzano’s time with her tiny house, Community First! organizers asked her what she wanted to have on the dedication plaque that will reside in front of the home in Texas. Ronzano said she decided to name it Ruby, in honor of her grandmother Dorothy, “my biggest supporter and fan,” who died in 2013.
“My grandma always told me to remember that no matter what I did or where I went, there really is no place like home, and just like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz,” I should just click my ruby slippers,” Ronzano said. “I wanted to name it Ruby as a token of good luck for it.”
Ronzano plans to travel to Austin later this month to make sure that Ruby made the trip safely, and to see where it will permanently reside.
Source:- http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/social-affairs/20150216/santa-cruz-woman-builds-tiny-house-donates-to-homeless
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