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For Jane Robbins, volunteering for a Housing Greensboro project did more than just give her a chance to help a homeowner in need. It also gave her hands-on experience with terms she had heard from home inspectors.

“Now we’re seeing what they mean,” says Robbins, a Realtor and co-owner of Ridgewood Realty in Oak Ridge. “What the flashing is, what the boot is, what the ridge is — all of that. It’s one thing to intellectually know it, but now it’s like, ‘OK, I’ve seen it. I can tear it off!’”

On a hot September morning, Robbins and her co-workers helped tear the roof off Pearl Fraser’s house in a neighborhood near the Greensboro Coliseum. Housing Greensboro, a nonprofit agency that started in 2005 as an offshoot of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Greensboro, does repair work on dozens of houses a year.

The agency helps people who can’t afford the repairs or can’t physically do the work themselves. It has a full-time staff of eight people, but depends on outside help from volunteers such as Robbins and the Greensboro Regional Realtors Association, the organization that brought her and other volunteers out for two weeks’ worth of work at Fraser’s house.

“I like to say we’re the greenest thing in town,” says Gene Brown, executive director of Housing Greensboro. “We’re trying to preserve existing houses for low-income families that own their homes through our home-repair programs.”

Housing Greensboro does two types of repairs: minor repairs, such as fixing a leaky faucet, and major repairs, such as the work on Fraser’s house. They not only replaced Fraser’s roof, but they also redid the kitchen and bathroom to correct substantial structural problems.

“We don’t do everything,” says David Dorich, construction operations manager for Housing Greensboro, speaking during a short break after climbing down a ladder from Fraser’s roof. “We don’t do a lot of cosmetic stuff. We try to approach the house as a whole, as a system. If we’re gonna fix this, then it makes sense to fix this and this while we’re here, and give the homeowner a safe place. ‘Warmer, dryer and safer’ is our motto. So obviously a leaking roof is not dryer, and rotten floors are not safer.”

The agency has an annual budget of about $350,000 for home repairs, Brown says. About 55 percent of that money comes from donations by individuals, faith organizations, civic organizations, local foundations and employers. The rest comes from state and local government grants. Housing Greensboro did about 45 major and minor home repairs in 2009, and is on track to do 65 or 70 by the end of this year, according to Brown.

“Part of our mission is to try to eliminate substandard housing conditions in Greensboro,” he says.

The major repairs program is limited to homeowners who live in their own homes and make 50 percent or less of median income for Guilford County. In 2009 that income limit ranged from $20,500 for a household with one person to $38,600 for a household with eight people, according to the Housing Greensboro website. “Which isn’t a lot, but we had to cut it off somewhere,” Dorich says.

Fraser, 64, contacted Housing Greensboro several months before the work began, encouraged by her sister to seek outside help getting her house back in shape.

“If I qualified, they would help, thank the Lord,” she says, standing in a neighbor’s yard with her dog, Boston.

Housing Greensboro has a long waiting list and doesn’t always get around to projects right away. The waiting list for major repairs currently includes 24 projects, with a waiting period of nine to 12 months, except for the most urgent cases, Brown says. For minor repairs, the waiting list has 32 projects, and applicants may have to wait three to six months.

The delay didn’t bother Fraser.

“I’ve been waiting this long, so I can wait,” she says. “Now that I see the work is being done, I’m satisfied.”

On the roof of Fraser’s house, Ridgewood Realty co-owner Bonnie Fielder used a shovel to scrape off shingles.

“If the pitch was different, we probably wouldn’t be up there,” she says during a break. “But it’s a pretty flat roof, and the guys are real good about telling us what we’re supposed to be looking for and doing.”

In addition to short-term volunteers such as Fielder and Robbins, Housing Greensboro also gets help from a group of retired men who volunteer on a regular basis.

“We’ve got a weekday crew of guys that come out a couple times a week,” Dorich says. “They’ll come in and they’ll work on this project throughout the week alongside us, and help us to further keep the project moving. We are always in search of good-quality guys.”

Housing Greensboro also gets help from a volunteer board of directors that includes four representatives of low-income, high-need neighborhoods. Marie Stamey, president of the Eastside Park Neighborhood Association, has served on the Housing Greensboro board for two years. Brown’s predecessor signed her up during a program in the neighborhood east of N.C. A&T’s campus.

“He asked me would I be on the board?” Stamey says. “I said, ‘Well, can I think about it?’ He gave me about 10 minutes and asked me had I thought about it.”

The agency has done major rehabilitation work on three homes in Eastside Park, Stamey says. Volunteers have also done minor repairs there, such as building wheelchair ramps for disabled residents.

“I just think that everybody deserves a chance,” Stamey says. “If there’s any way that Housing Greensboro can help, ask. There can only be one of two answers: yes or no.”

Fraser was happy that the answer was “yes” in her case. She looks forward to the reaction from relatives when she hosts their next reunion.

“We have family reunions around there every year,” Fraser says. “The family comes over. Mostly we’re out in the yard, because the house was not in good shape. We’ve been having a good time doing that every year for 34 years, so now they’re gonna have a new place to come chill out.”

Contact Eddie Huffman at 373-7335 or eddie.huffman@news-record.com.