They say it’s what’s inside that counts. Heidi Bendetson knows this better than most.
As founder of the nonprofit interior design company Designed From the Heart, the Marina Del Rey native recently led a project to furnish 73 subsidized homes in San Pedro for homeless female veterans with children.
The housing complex, known as Blue Butterfly Village and developed by Volunteers of America (VOA), attracted a group of political heavyweights May 5 to commemorate its opening. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was joined by City Councilmember Joe Buscaino, Reps. Ted Lieu and Janice Hahn, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald — and Bendetson, of course.
“Heidi took it to another level,” said Nicole Pratt, director of VOA Los Angeles. “She really made these homes rich and beautiful and special.”
Bendetson and her nonprofit took $4,200 in funding per home from VOA — enough to provide only the bare necessities — and found a way to equip each home with kitchenware, small appliances and functional home décor, in addition to furnishings.
“We had a very small budget, nothing extravagant whatsoever,” Bendetson said. “We had specifics that we needed, and then we went above and beyond because we really related to this community.”
Bendetson said each home has at least $10,000 worth of furnishings and accessories.
“They came in with this base budget, they were able to get donations from friends and family and corporations, and they built on that tremendously,” Pratt said. “It became a beautiful community of individualized homes instead of just transition housing.”
Pratt said she reached out to Bendetson two years ago after hearing about her 2011 redesign of Culver City’s Beit T’Shuvah addiction treatment facility. Beit T’Shuvah did not give Bendetson any money, but she still raised over $500,000 and oversaw the redesign of 43 rooms.
Pratt said she hoped Bendetson would be ready to expand the scope of her philanthropy.
“I had been working on this project for a while,” Pratt said. “When I met with her, she had never done anything of this scale, so it was very pioneering for the two of us. It was the perfect fit.”
One of the first things Bendetson said she did when she signed on to the project was call around to get people to donate their time and design a home. She ended up getting more than 125 volunteer decorators.
“Most of them are not professional designers,” she said. “They are people like myself who aren’t designers by accreditation. I knew that most of these people have very good taste and have made homes for their families, and I knew they would be up to the task.”
Annette Shapiro is one of the volunteers who worked with Bendetson. She said she cherished the opportunity to provide a home for someone who served in the military. She added that while everyone worked hard on their assigned home, Bendetson is the one responsible for the whole project coming together.
“If it wasn’t for her, these houses would never have been decorated the way they were,” Shapiro said. “It’s unbelievable. It is really unbelievable. She worked very, very hard.”
Bendetson admitted she and many of the volunteers didn’t know a population of homeless veteran mothers existed until they started this project. But she credited the people who helped her design homes with creating a positive energy around the project.
“They heard there was a call, they found the situation absolutely appalling, and the community of volunteers snowballed because everyone wanted to be a part of this,” she said.
Blue Butterfly Village was completed in February, but so far the only families who have moved in are the four families who moved in on May 5, according to Pratt and Bendetson. Pratt said multiple government agencies are making it complicated to move families into the homes, but she expects to have the majority of the homes occupied by the end of July.
Bendetson said she is frustrated by the red tape and wants her homes to be filled as soon as possible.
“These people are in dire straits,” she said. “A lot of these people feel very forgotten by our population, and we made them not invisible. We tried to make them realize that people care.”
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