Joes Brait (left), a Barnstable County Sheriff inmate crew chief, helps two crew members move one of the ground tarps used to collect up old shingles stripped from the roof above. If you look closely, you’ll notice some have already landed in the roof’s gutter. The house is part of a cluster of dwellings run by Champ Homes, a Hyannis non-profit that finds living quarters for homeless adults faced with challenges of varying scope and magnitude. The houses are located mostly near Cape Cod Hospital, not far from the Hyannis-Yarmouth line.
Before ascending to the roof, the crew busies itself preparing stock for up-hoisting once the old shingles have been stripped. Sheriff James Cummings dispatched Brait and five inmates to perform the job. It took four days and saved Champ Homes about $6,600 in labor costs. A tiny, one-resident bungalow next to the two-story cape seen here was re-roofed as well.
An inmate emerges from a cellar bulkhead amid a swirl of tarps and already stripped shingles. Weather this day was sunny, with little wind and reaching into the upper 40s. Not bad for mid-February.
These two are now hard at the arduous job of stripping shingles. This project was in play at the same time the Sheriff’s Office was releasing its annual stats for 2015: 21,630 inmate man-hours; 14 Cape Cod communities; $594,825 worth of donated labor (virtually the same as in 2014); 48 inmates in all; and 201 jobs in all. About half were to lend, erect, and dismantle tents to give local non-profits a suitable fundraising venue. Most of the rest, like the re-roofing undertaken here, were for actual construction or landscaping / maintenance work.
Media release and photos furnished by Barnstable Sheriff’s Office
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