if not thousands were vacant and gutted. Many more buildings had hardly been touched since the waters were drained, and ruined possessions were still inside severely damaged buildings. On December 3, 2007, Make It Right Foundation, founded by the actor Brad Pitt, committed to rebuild 150 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward. The houses are sustainable, energy-efficient and safe. Make It Right homes were designed by award-winning architects from New Orleans and around the world, including Frank Gehry, Shigeru Ban, Hitoshi Abe and Thom Mayne. Pitt stated: "I walked into it blind, just thinking, 'People need homes; I know people who make great homes.'" As of March 2012, the foundation has rebuilt about 80 solar-paneled homes. In the spring of 2008, Build Now, a local, non-profit homebuilder, began working to bring New Orleans families back home. It constructed site-built, stilt houses on hurricane-damaged lots. The homes reflect the style and quality of traditional New Orleans architecture but are built above potential flood waters. Build Now is in the process of bringing more than a dozen New Orleans families back home; nine houses are currently under construction in the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward areas, Lakeview and Gentilly. The organization has moved three New Orleans families back home. As of September 2008, 3 years after Katrina, hundreds of houses have been rebuilt and renovated, and dozens of new homes have been constructed. Volunteers continue to come to the area in mass numbers, working for dozens of organizations including Common Ground Relief, formerly Common Ground Collective; and lowernine.org, a grassroots organization that coordinates volunteers' and residents' efforts in rebuilding homes in the Lower Ninth Ward. Residents and volunteers are striving to make the Lower Ninth Ward a sustainable community. They are working to restore the local wetlands, lower the crime, and control weed overgrowth. It is widely believed that if it were not for the extensive canal dredging to support commercial development, resulting in subsequent wetlands subsidence, the Lower Ninth Ward would not have suffered such extensive flooding during Katrina. In September 2011, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, announced a landscaping maintenance program called the "Nuisance Lot Maintenance Program", to attempt to clear the overgrown lots in the Lower Ninth. The program consists of 12 men, residents of the Ward or ex-offenders, going block-by-block to maintain the overgrowth. As of 2012, the program has cleared more than 1,200 lots. However, as of