Making L.A. a Bit More Like Philippi

My Friends and I Read a Book About Generosity In Ancient Greece. Then We Decided to Build a House.

Whenever I see a house for sale in my Los Angeles neighborhood, I ask myself how anyone other than the rich and famous can afford to buy a place here. Yet a couple months ago, I decided to take the plunge and invest in a home. It is easily one of the biggest financial commitments I’ve ever made, but I know the payoff will be worth the sacrifice. Did I mention this house is not for me or my family? In fact, it’s for a family I have yet to meet.

Early last December, a dozen of my friends and I had just finished studying a short book about a group of people who lived in the city of Philippi in Ancient Greece. The Philippians, we learned, were recognized for their generosity. The generous spirit of these long-gone people inspired us, and we got to thinking about ourselves in comparison. What will people say about us and our community in a hundred years, let alone 2,000? Angelenos are famous for many things, but generosity isn’t usually one of them.

So we started to talk about it. Could we Angelenos be a little more like the Philippians? We considered pooling our money to make a gift of some kind, but giving money was a remote form of generosity. We wanted to be more hands-on. We thought about serving regularly in a soup kitchen or shelter, but decided we’d be more motivated if we had more ownership in the project. We also wanted something that required us to work as a group.

Then we heard that Habitat for Humanity was looking to raise funds and gather volunteers to build 10 homes on a parcel of land in Culver City. The need was immediate and local, and it fit so many of the criteria for what we wanted to do as modern-day Philippians. The only catch was that the financial commitment for even a single house was 10 times the size of anything I’d imagined. We were just 12 people who had met through church: lawyers, firefighters, filmmakers, business owners, actors, pharmacists, and students, all of us in our 20s and 30s. Certainly none of us had any experience fundraising on this scale or constructing anything of this magnitude.

But the Habitat project was our chance to move from word to deed. And it was hard to miss that this opportunity came to us at precisely the time we started looking. The more we discussed it, the more the idea settled in. The project seemed nearly impossible, but part of its appeal was that it would require a step of faith. When we were asked for a project name, we knew it had to be called the Philippians House.

Soon, we hope, we’ll meet the family who will live in the Philippians House and put in 500 hours of labor building the house alongside us. After they move in, they’ll make payments on a nonprofit, zero-interest mortgage held by Habitat to fund other homes in Los Angeles and around the world. Until we meet the family, though, our goal is clear: raise $150,000 by June and recruit volunteers for a dozen build days in the months following. To date we’ve given and raised close to 20 percent, and we think we can fund up to one-third of the total from just within our group. We’re talking with friends, family, coworkers, and occasional random strangers to see where the rest of the money will come from.

Something about being asked to give money causes people who are usually blasé about spending it to suddenly become discriminating consumers. Many of the questions I get are a variant on “Why don’t you use that money to build wells in Africa?” It’s a fair question. For every cause, there are a dozen others equally deserving. The multitude of choices, however, shouldn’t stop us from finding at least one worthy cause. For our part, we’re committed to serving the city in which we live. If charity begins at home, then charity, for us, begins in Los Angeles.

We can’t wait to see the faces of our Philippians House family light up when we tell them that we will help them realize their dream of owning a home. And we can’t wait to work beside them to lay the foundation for this house and for a better life for them and the generations to come.

Before we see the Philippians House built, though, we’ll need to see many more people who are willing to give generosity a chance. Generous people will tell you that generosity is like a muscle. At first, giving even a small amount can be a burden. But as we exercise the muscle, it becomes stronger and able to handle heavier loads. It’s the sort of exercise I’d love to see us Angelenos master, just as the Philippians did 2,000 years ago. Luckily, we Angelenos love a good workout.


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