TERRE HAUTE — The team includes recovering alcoholics, drug addicts and those who have spent time in prison, but when it comes to their work, members of the Freebirds Home Improvement construction company know the stakes are high.
“Our people know that if they get kicked out of here, they’re going back to jail,” said Jack Tanner, director of operations for the Freebirds Solution Center sober-living facility, out of which the construction team was created. You won’t hear foul language on their construction sites, and the company guarantees punctual, clean, sober workers, as well as quality craftsmanship.
So far, the crew has completed about a dozen projects, and has three more in the works.
Three residents of the Freebirds Solution Center make up the current team. The men have been with the program for about a year, and have “more than proved themselves,” said Tanner. All the profits from the Freebirds Home Improvement construction company go toward paying for the Freebirds Solution Center building and programs, he added.
Tanner, a former drug addict who has spent time in prison, developed the solution center in late 2004 as an alternative to typical halfway houses and residential treatment centers. The facility, located in the former Greenwood Elementary School on Voorhees Street, is home to 40 men and women who are learning to cope with life after achieving sobriety. A brochure for the center claims that quitting drugs or alcohol is “just the beginning. Once sobriety is achieved, the process of rebuilding one’s life must begin.” Two “honor houses” across the street from the facility (one for men and one for women) are rented to former residents of the facility who have graduated to higher levels of responsibility.
The construction company, which got off the ground about a month ago, is just one of several ideas Tanner and Doug Falls, who runs the company, came up with as part of helping residents rebuild their lives.
“It can be really hard to get a job if you have a felony drug conviction,” Tanner said. “It was our goal to have our own business to support our people here.”
In 2005, Freebirds received the Hamilton Center Community Service Award, which acknowledges an organization’s commitment and contribution to addiction recovery.
Falls, who learned about the Freebirds Solution Center from an article last year, began contributing to the program by chopping firewood to keep the center’s heating bills low.
“When we first moved in,” Tanner said, “we heated with gas and had heating bills of $3,000 per month. It almost killed us. We converted to wood after Doug offered wood from his sawmill. Now we are saving tons.”
Falls later quit his job at the sawmill to devote all his efforts toward the Freebirds Center. Now he is instrumental in the operation of the construction company, which falls under the umbrella of Freebirds Small Business Development.
The stacks of wood outside the center are a testimony to the resourcefulness of its residents and directors. “We are not enablers,” Tanner added, stating that residents who miss required meetings or are having a hard time keeping up with rent may make it up by chopping wood or doing other jobs around the facility.
Both Tanner and Falls have experience in the construction business, each having owned a construction company in the past. They agree that a conventional building crew can be full of pitfalls for a recovering addict.
“On other jobs,” Falls said, “you get people talking about drinking and going for a beer after work, something that can seem really innocent. For our guys, that just won’t work. It’s too easy to slip back into the lifestyle.”
Tanner said one of the problems when he had his own business was finding employees who would show up on time. “We focus here on doing what you say you will do,” he said. Tanner added that he knows all the excuses, and he can tell who is serious about improving and who isn’t.
Before being allowed to work for Freebirds Home Improvement, residents must prove themselves, Tanner said, by passing multiple drug screens, cooperating with treatment and doing daily chores around the center.
When Falls and Tanner decided to get the business program going, they called on a small business development group, which gave the board of directors tips on how to set it up.
In the future, Freebirds hopes to add a business that would focus on doing small engine repairs.
“In the center, we would like to find individuals who excel in different fields,” Falls said, “and then help them get started in their own small business, if that’s what they would like to do. We want to help them through the process.”
He added that none of the programs or business possibilities are gender-specific. “If there’s a woman who comes through with experience with construction, then we want her on the team,” he said.
The development of businesses to complement the sober-living facility helps make residents more responsible and self-sufficient, two of the goals of the center, Tanner said. “People here are not charity cases. This gives them a job that can help them pay fines, fees, court costs, treatment costs and rent,” he said.
In addition, the workers are held to a high standard, including a dress code and strict language policies. Falls said the focus is on respecting others, “not just when clients are around” but all the time.
As for the cost of jobs done by the Freebirds Home Improvement company, Falls says the pricing is “competitive.” The group offers free estimates and claims that “no job is too small!”
“We do quality work,” Falls said. “I tell them, if at the end of the job you can’t step back and say you’d pay someone to do that exact same job at your mother’s house or your house, then you didn’t do a good enough job.”
While the company stresses high-quality workmanship, Falls emphasizes that the main goal is to provide a safe, clean working environment for residents.
“So far,” he said, “we’re really pleased with the results.”
Deb McKee can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.mckee@tribstar.com.
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Members of Freebirds program work in construction company
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