Home Trip
Seventy-five days. Thirty-nine hundred miles. Twelve states.
That’s how Butler resident Nathan Barry, 23, plans to spend his summer, pedaling his bicycle from Virginia Beach, Va., to Cannon Beach, Ore., with the Bike & Build Central United States housing project.
Bike & Build is an independent, nonprofit Philadelphia-based organization working to raise awareness of affordable housing.
Justin Villere, director of operations and outreach, said the nonprofit began in 2003 and has grown to offer eight routes for adults 18 to 25 to work nationwide with affordable housing organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.
According to BikeAndBuild.org, cyclists receive a new bike in exchange for raising $4,500 and training 500 miles to participate in a trip. Participants partner with housing projects at building sites across the country, cycling from site to site to help with construction and to give presentations on affordable housing.
Barry, a 2009 Butler High School graduate, said an unfulfilling job in Connecticut pushed him to get involved in the affordable housing cause.
Barry, who has a degree in architectural engineering from Drexel University, was designing luxury mansions for “people with more money than God.”
As a college student, Barry lived in a row home in Philadelphia. While for him the situation was temporary, many of his neighbors lived permanently in poor conditions with little or no means to improve.
When he began work in Connecticut, Barry said he couldn’t justify designing massive vacation homes while thinking of his struggling neighbors in Philadelphia.
He left Connecticut and started applying for jobs in Pittsburgh, remaining upfront in his applications about his interest in Bike & Build.
Loftus Engineers offered him a job and the time off he would need for this summer’s trip. He started working there in December.
On the central U.S. bike route, Barry said he’ll leave Virginia Beach May 25 after a two-day orientation. From there, his 32-person group will bike west to build sites in Virginia, according to the route overview on Bike & Build’s website. The group will spend 11 days at sites.
“We’ll be volunteering for other organizations to build or paint,” Barry said. “They’ll be there for an entire project. We’ll come in for the day or two days to help out as much as we possibly can.”
Barry said the type of projects will vary based on the need at each individual site. Some sites will be single-family homes while others are in apartment buildings. His group will stay at schools and YMCAs along the way to give presentations on affordable housing.
“The thing that they’re trying to show is that on minimum wage you can’t afford ‘fair rent,’ which they consider 30 percent of whatever you get paid,” Barry said.
Villere said Bike & Build seeks to create an “information exchange” between riders and residents.
“We’re staying in cities as big as Chicago and towns as small as 40 people. That brings with it a wide range of housing issues,” Villere said. “There’s a lot of diversity in the housing cause, so we’re trying to make our riders aware of all those issues, then help them become advocates.”
Although Barry knows about designing homes, Villere said Bike & Build applicants need neither construction nor cycling experience to earn a spot on a trip.
“We’re really looking for people who just want to have an impact on their community and do it through an adventure,” Villere said.
As of mid-January, Barry was at 36 percent of his fundraising goal.
More information on his trip and how to get involved is available at bikeandbuild.org/rider/7882.
