The Good Neighbor Home Repair Project provides limited home repairs for low-income elderly and disabled persons and some families with children.

Hawkins and Hancock Counties have a large number of residents who are in great need of home repairs. Most are either elderly or disabled persons who have lived on small household incomes most of their lives. These folks eventually retire with minimal incomes of $500-600 a month from Social Security. This small income does not permit them to maintain their homes, purchase medicines and groceries, pay utility bills, and keep their vehicles running. As a result, these folks usually forego the maintenance on their homes, until their houses become so greatly deteriorated that someone needs to come to their aid. That is where the Good Neighbor Home Repair Program steps in. Of One Accord began assisting with home repairs in 1996, and today, operates a systematic approach to providing home repairs.

How it Works: Applicants in need of home repairs can obtain an application at the Shepherd’s Center in Rogersville. Once they have completed an application, our ministry staff evaluate their needs and take photos of their home. These photos, along with a paragraph outlining the needs of the family or individual, are placed on-line, where potential mission teams from other communities can read about the family and their needs, and see pictures of the homes.

Mission teams then choose the home or homes they want to repair, which usually depends on the skill of their workers and the complexity of the repair job. One Accord Ministry is not responsible for choosing the repair projects that are worked on each summer; rather this decision is left up to each mission team that is coming into our area to do home repairs.

Once a mission team chooses a home that they want to repair, they send a small group into the area in the spring so they can meet with the home owner and look over the project to determine the extent of the work needed.

Who Pays for the Repairs? Of One Accord Ministry uses several sources to help pay for the home repairs, to include donations from the local community and/or the mission teams, state grant programs offered by local agencies, and on occasion funds that the home owner or his/her family members may have available.

In 2009: 21 mission teams (362 team members) came into our area from around the country to work on 15 homes and our Sneedville center. Their work was valued at $101,435. They also planned 6 Vacation Bible Schools.