The air is biting cold but the dozen or so Duchesne County Jail inmates shrug it off and make final preparations to move the home they’ve built onto flatbed trucks for its final destination.

Meanwhile, Gene and Mary Lamson and their daughter Hazel wait around a fire barrel in Myton for their new home to arrive. A light skiff of snow lays in early morning shadows, but the sky is bright and clear and the sun is brilliantly shining.

Gene drops a few more logs of cottonwood in the half metal barrel and hustles off for more chairs.

“Sit down,” he invites, gesturing graciously. He and his wife Mary are joined by a daughter-in-law, who balances their one year-old granddaughter on her hip, and Mary’s brother, Fred Herzfeld, who's come with his girlfriend to wait and watch.

This house had become a family affair.

“My son Alan said he’s happy we’ve finally got a new house,” Mary says with a smile.

There is room for all who stop by. Folks either draw their chairs near the fire or push them back from it as it grows hotter. A small camp-trailer nearby has been the Lamsons' home for the past month, Mary says, and cocks her head toward the squat single-axle trailer with the door standing ajar.

The entire camper is smaller than the smallest bedroom in the new home.

“We were on the list for nine years,” Gene says, referring to a waiting list held by the Uintah Basin Association of Governments, which manages a handful of low-income housing programs. Gene says they were living in an old 12-foot by 52-foot trailer house built in the early '60s. UBAOG helped with weatherization by replacing old windows and putting in insulation.

“We couldn’t get home replacement, because we got the weatherization,” he says.

Years later, the Lamsons were offered a bigger trailer, “as long as I paid the back taxes and paid to have it moved,” Gene says, adding that they took the generous offer.

The Lamsons needed more space. They were raising three children. Gene says he applied for weatherization again and after awhile UBAOG’s crew came out and installed new energy-efficient windows and insulated the trailer where they could.

It was earlier this spring when Gene decided to apply again for the housing replacement program, which provides a new low-income house to replace an existing home where repairs would cost more than half of the home's value, according to current market value.

The Lamsons qualified.

“I was excited about it, but I’ve got my hopes up before,” Gene says.

Every step the Lamsons took — picking out a three-bedroom house plan, and finally signing mortgage papers — found Gene becoming more confident and excited. Then, there he was on the morning of Oct. 28, with a new home on its way.

“We build them as they are sold, as soon as the paperwork is done,” said Duchesne County sheriff's deputy Aaron Murray, who is not only trained as a corrections deputy, but has a general contractor's license and is the building trades instructor for the Uintah Basin Applied Technology College.

Murray works with a crew of 12 state prison inmates at a time, and says there is a waiting list for his class. He begins with the basics and within a few months the men are reading blueprints and doing hands-on construction, from framing to hanging their own custom-made cabinetry on finished walls. When subcontractors come out, the men assist them, to give them an idea how each step of construction is done.

When the inmates are between houses Murray encourages them to use scrap wood to construct items for family members or build children’s toys that are displayed in a case in the main lobby and can be purchased by the public.

“They are within a few years of getting out once they’re at this facility,” said Duchesne County Jail Commander Keith Hansen. “They are thinking about what they are going to do when they are on the outside ... it will give them a trade so they can get a job and work.”

When inmates complete the class they are awarded a certificate, Hansen said.

“They have the opportunity to feel proud of what they do and see the finished product,” he said.

Murray said the homes are up to today’s “green” standards — meaning they are built to be environmentally friendly and pressure tested by federal inspectors to ensure that heating and cooling costs will be as low as possible.

“They told us the carpet will be in on Nov. 8,” Mary Lamson says.

The new shiny black appliances will be put in after that and the couple will be able to move their furniture out of storage and into their new home.

“We’ll have room to have people over for dinner,” Mary says.

The home will change the family's life in other ways as well. They’ve created a couple new rules: Shoes off at the front door, no smoking, and eating only at the kitchen table.

“That’s enough rules,” Gene says with a laugh. “No more than that or I’ll take my bed and move into the basement.”

Hazel says she wants to have friends over for slumber parties and paint her bedroom bright lime green with a frog motif.

“I love frogs,” she says shyly.

But the blue vinyl sided home trimmed in white wouldn’t have been a possibility at all without the cooperation of all three entities, said UBATC Vice President of Instruction John Wahl.

“It’s a unique program with so many government people working together to make something work,” Wahl said. “It provides low-income housing and it provides inmates with education and lowers the recidivism rates.”

The program also provides building trades students with materials purchased through UBAOG, which is a boon to the school, as well, Wahl said.

“The school is always looking for materials,” he said, and the inmates earn a small wage of about $1 an hour, which they in turn use to pay for their tuition.

Reary’s wage is actually paid half by the college and half by UBAOG to run the building trades program.

Katrina Bodkin, housing coordinator for UBAOG, said the program has built more than 80 homes since it was first implemented about a dozen years ago.

“We procured a loan from the state of Utah’s Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund for the Lamsons,” Bodkin said, adding that the loan is available only to those who fall within the income guidelines and has a 1 percent to 3 percent interest rate, depending on individual income.

The three-bedroom home built by the inmates can be no more than $110, 000, and a two-bedroom home must fall at or below $90,000.

UBAOG oversees the complete demolition and removal of the old home on the owner’s property before the groundwork is started and supervises the project, even hiring subcontractors in the Basin to do excavation, concrete work, insulating, plumbing and electrical work.

When the cranes pulls up at the Lamsons to offload the house from the flatbed trailers, Gene takes up a camera to record a momentous day in his life. He snaps photos, and is intensely interested in the operation of setting the home down. The chilly day has turned warm. Warmer still as Gene says he’ll now have a snug home for even his extended family. No one will be left out in the cold, he says.