The 1,400 employees at the sprawling John Deere Harvester Works in East Moline are used to making huge combine harvesters and other front-end agricultural equipment. On Friday, May 29, about 80 workers combined with Habitat for Humanity Quad Cities to produce wood frames for a new home.
The new partnership includes six John Deere facilities across Iowa, where workers are framing and assembling walls of entire homes. Habitat for Humanity crews will transport those finished panels to home sites in Des Moines, the Quad Cities, Waterloo, and Dubuque, where the walls will be raised and become part of new homes for local families.
This marks the first time Habitat affiliates in the state have worked together, allowing more homes to be built across several communities at the same time. More than 1,200 Deere employees are volunteering this week and next on job sites supporting home builds, on-site panel builds, and Habitat ReStore projects.
“It’s inspiring to see the scale of John Deere’s Building Our Communities initiative, with this level of investment of time, energy, and funds into Iowa communities,” said Lisa Houser, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Iowa. “This initiative shows that John Deere is doubling down on support for affordable homeownership across our state, taking the partnership that we’ve seen for years to a whole new level.”
In many communities, volunteers will work side by side with future homeowners, offering a hands-on way to support families working toward homeownership.
"We wanted to create as many ways as possible for people to show up and help," said Taryn Edgin, president of the John Deere Foundation. "Whether employees are building alongside future homeowners or framing walls on-site at one of our facilities, that's what this is about. Neighbors helping neighbors."
In 2026, John Deere’s $1.2 million support across Iowa is expected to help build or rehabilitate more than 30 homes in partnership with Habitat affiliates statewide. Deere also matches employee donations to Habitat at 200% from June 1 to July 31, tripling every dollar employees contribute.
Deere and Habitat have partnered for more than 15 years to support affordable homeownership and strengthen local communities. Over the past five years, John Deere and its employees have contributed more than $6.5 million to Habitat’s work across Iowa.
Through Habitat’s program, families partner to purchase homes with an affordable mortgage, helping create long-term stability and a place to call their own.
Habitat QC is dedicated to building thriving communities. For over 33 years, the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate has served low-income families with the construction of affordable homes. Habitat also operates a home repair program and an accessibility ramp program for low-income homeowners.
For the first time ever, Habitat for Humanity affiliates across Iowa and the QC are joining forces in a one-week blitz build powered by John Deere. In the QC, that effort comes to life at John Deere Harvester Works and Davenport Works (where Deere produces construction equipment), where volunteers will measure, cut, lay, and frame wall panels that will later be transported for home build sites in East Moline and Davenport.
In the Quad Cities, Deere planned to commit 720 hours employee volunteer hours -- including Friday at Harvester Works, 1100 13th Ave., East Moline, and additional volunteerism at off-site home construction sites and the Habitat ReStore, 3629 Mississippi Ave., Davenport.
Part of longstanding company commitment
Taryn Edgin is the John Deere Foundation president and director of community relations for Moline-based Deere. She’s a third-generation Deere employee, who’s worked for the company 11 years, and head of the foundation since April 2025.
“We have a longstanding commitment to stable, safe and affordable housing in the communities where we live and work,” Edgin said Friday. “We have operations and employees for the last five years, equated to $6.5 million in grants, but also 28,000 volunteer hours, which is really the power behind our employees showing up in our communities. Our employees have benefits where every hour they volunteer they get $20 that they can then go donate to the organization.
"And we also have an amazing match program where with this initiative we're doing, for every dollar they would donate, we will match it with $2. So we're excited for our employees about the opportunity to contribute to this housing situation and improve it for our neighbors and our communities through those additional benefits.”
One of the challenges for employees is, it may be difficult for them to volunteer in the community during the workday.
“So we said, why don't we bring it to them?” Edgin said. “We do meal packing events that we bring here or in this opportunity, we actually get to bring this to life. And a skill that they like to do and are great at to our factories. Outside of that, our employees do get paid volunteer eight hours a year time off at a minimum. But it's really up to them working with their managers. And we have employees volunteer far more than that every year.”
On top of the blitz day Friday, Deere employees will volunteer in shifts to work at the house build sites during June and July. Next week, plants in Waterloo, Des Moines and Davenport Works will be doing the same thing, and Harvester employees will volunteer at the Habitat ReStore (3629 Mississippi Ave., Davenport) to repaint the interior.
The store, where you can buy or donate gently-used furnishings and construction materials Tuesdays through Saturdays, will reopen on June 9th.
“The other thing that this really ties well into John Deere, we're known for agriculture equipment manufacturing, but we're also known for construction equipment manufacturing,” Edgin said. “Think about Davenport Works just down the street. And when you think about tying this to our customers, how they show up every day to build the infrastructure and the houses that we all live in, it's a very natural tie. So we reached out to our local dealer, Martin Equipment, and said, hey, we're doing this effort.”
“So they've actually already started volunteering at house sites to finish them here in the Quat Cities. And then they will continue progressing along these two houses that we're building between here and Davenport Works in the upcoming weeks. And it's just been so cool because we're bringing a dealer, we're bringing our employees, and we're bringing Habitat together.”
While the Des Moines and Waterloo Deere plants have done frame builds at their sites, this is the first time in the QC, and they have talked to Habitat executive director Tom Fisher-King about making it an annual activity.
“Des Moines and Waterloo Habitats have helped train the Dubuque and Quad City Habitats on how we do this, because this is a different skill than they're used to, building a house in a day, bringing all this on site,” Edgin said. “They've actually started partnering together and skilling each other in this, bringing the panel builds on site.”
The Deere Foundation typically donates $250,000 a year for QC Habitat builds, she noted.
“What we talked to Tom about is like, let's get this pilot done. Let's make sure that they enjoy it, we can build a quality house and that it's engaging for our employees,” Edgin said. “I would love to make this a regular event. I'd love to expand it. I'd love to get to the point where we're Waterloo size, where they're building five to seven houses in two days, that's kind of how big they've made it. So we have the opportunity. It's really just how do we organize around it? And we're committed. Like we know in the Quad Cities and in the state of Iowa, housing is near crisis level.
“We have one of the oldest housing stocks in the nation in this state,” she added. “We know that we have families who are one fence away from having housing instability. And that's not what we want for our communities. So we're absolutely committed to growing this.”
Union and management work together
About 80 employees worked Friday, a mix of union employees and management hammering wood panels together, Edgin said.
"We have very predominant Deere leaders. And then our UAW employees working together on this is really cool merging, and to give them that opportunity to come and unify over one activity together, we just don't often get that opportunity," she said.
“Normally, it takes a solid month to be able to frame a house,” Fisher-King said.
“So to be able to do this in one day, day, it'll stand up. As a matter of time, yes, it is more efficient. But we have some volunteers that only want to frame. We have some volunteers who want to paint.”
“We've been partnering with Deere for well over 10 years. And so Deere has impacted 10 homes with us and four of which they're fully funded to be able for us to be able to build,” he said of the QC Habitat affiliate. “So having a partnership with John Deere, its employees who also spend a lot of time with us, not just today. We have John Deere employees that come weekly and are on groups for us. They help us in our warehouse, they help us on build sites, in the ReStore and so on.
"And so having this partnership, long term, not only is there a financial benefit, but the volunteer hours that we're able to gain from those employees that believe in Habitat, believe in the mission," Fisher-King said. "So it is very important to us.”
The affordable housing crisis in the QC continues to grow, Fisher-King said.
“And we'll continue to see that need grow as housing costs increase. You know, stock is low,” he said. “There's less houses coming out onto the market and people are staying in their houses longer. And so some of affordable prices are not hitting the market yet. And if they do, they go pretty quickly. For Habitat, we provide a zero-interest mortgage and so our partner families purchase those homes for up to 30 years at a zero-interest mortgage. They're paying property taxes, they're paying insurance. Our property taxes for Habitat homes are over $1.2 million in Scott County and Rock Island County property taxes last year.”
Habitat says that across Iowa, the affordable housing need is significant: more than 319,000 Iowa households spend over 30 percent of their income on housing, leaving less room in their budgets for essentials like food, health care, and transportation, which makes it harder for families to stay financially stable over time, according to a Habitat release.
Nearly a quarter of households in the state are facing that kind of pressure, the nonprofit said.
Partner families who are selected and buy Habitat homes must agree to put in 250 hours of sweat equity into the home.
“Let's remember that Habitat's not a quick fix. Once you're selected into the program, it can take up to two years before you get your home,” Fisher-King said. “And so I can't have a lot of families sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting. We also have to raise the dollars for all we do. No bank loans, we have no lines of credit. This is old-fashioned fundraising in order to fund these homes and to be able to offer zero-interest mortgage loan to that family.”
Habitat and Deere staff went to Des Moines in late February to get trained on the on-site frame building.
“This has been in the plan since the beginning of the year,” Fisher-King said. “We started talking about it last fall and how cool it would be. Let's talk about what we're doing. John Deere is in those individual areas. They're funding a lot, but why aren't we doing it all together all at once and be able to say, this is the overall impact, not just for John Deere, for the foundation, for the employees, for Habitat. Let's talk about what we really are doing as a whole.”
Habitat QC usually builds five or six homes a year, and over the past 33 years, built 145 homes total.
“A blessing”
One of Friday’s volunteers was Quentin Boyer of Moline, a factory-level continuous improvement representative at John Deere Harvester, where he’s worked 19 years.
He loves the people and the environment at the plant.
“I love it. It's good when you can see a company like Deere give back to the community the way they do and get our employees involved and volunteer because they know it's a good thing too,” Boyer said. “Everybody likes to do good stuff. And again, we're giving back to the community and we love it. We love to do it.”
This is his first Habitat project.
“I think it's great. Habitat does a lot with the community, especially when they partner with John Deere and together they do great things,” Boyer said. “I want to be a part of something that's greater than myself. I want to; I feel like I am blessed and I want to help out as well and bless other people as well.”
He’s owned a home 17 years in Moline, where he lives with his wife and six kids (ages 9 to 22), and considers himself a handyman.
“I’m a jack of all trades, but an expert at none,” Boyer said, noting he’s putting in 16 hours at Harvester Works on the Habitat frames and wants to help build on site until it’s done by next June.
To see a new family move in, “I might shed a tear, honestly,” he said. “It's a good thing, like I said. And to give a family, that is a blessing.”
Other Deere volunteers have been busy recently working on a new Habitat home (no. 146) at 424 E. 15th St., Davenport, which will be done in September, for Destiny and her family, who have been renting.
“This opportunity is nothing short of a blessing from God!” that homeowner says on the Habitat QC website.
“This opportunity means new beginnings for me as well as stability. Not only will this open up doors so that I can focus on my future, this will secure my life in a way that I've wanted for so long. Knowing that this home will be a first major investment for me brings me so much joy. I'm excited to begin new traditions and create special memories with my family.”
"John Deere staff has been the wind beneath our wings supporting our affordable homeownership work," Cassandra Erwin, Habitat QC's development director, said Friday. "We are incredibly grateful to the teams of volunteers from John Deere who have worked hundreds of hours in service to our vulnerable neighbors."
John Deere has financially supported 16 homes in partnership with Habitat for Humanity QC since 2012.
Habitat held its first completed home dedication this year on May 16, at 1360 Morton Drive, East Moline. For more information on Habitat, click HERE.
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