Earlier this year we featured Mark Huber, a local Seattle builder.

But Mark Huber isn’t your typical business-owner; in fact, you could say he lives a double life. Most know him as a good family man and successful contractor. But Huber also raises funds and recruits people to help build homes for families in need in Honduras—and he started doing this in the midst of the Great Recession.

That post featured Huber’s work in Central America and now he’s bringing the same compassion to a local family. From the KIRO feature story:

Mark Huber didn’t know Judith Hart or her family, but he has a plan to build them a new house.

“It was a need, it was a pure need, they needed a house.” Huber said. “I understand what it’s like to have your house destroyed by a fire.  It happened to me as a young kid.”

Huber is used to building homes for families in need. He travels to countries like Honduras and Uruguay several times a year for the builds.

“I take different groups down to Honduras to build homes to show them what it’s like,” said Huber.

Over the past 30 years, his company has also built and sold hundreds of homes in the Seattle area.

But this is his first volunteer project in this country.

Huber is a great example of a local business owner who builds housing in our community but also gives to the community when every he can. The City Builder series is something we’ll be expanding next year to counter the misimpression that most builders and developers are corporations. That just isn’t true. They are mostly the people you stand in line with at the grocery store, attend local sports events with, or meet at parent meetings as schools. The sooner that people in Seattle realize that, the sooner we’ll resolve the pointless efforts to punish builders for doing a good thing, building housing.