Habitat World Online Exclusives

Georgia: Homeowner Marion Willoughby
By Tilly Grey

Twenty-seven years ago Marion Willoughby was a brick mason living in Connecticut. Swayed by the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, he joined an organization he calls Southern Rural and journeyed south to build homes for poor people.

“I ended up getting sick, had a heart attack and stayed in Georgia,” he says.

His old yellow house is the only existing structure on the field in Plains where five new Habitat houses were built during the JCWP week. “Most of my family’s not around here. I was getting ready to go north to be near them, but now they can come and be with me here,” Willoughby says, gesturing toward his new home. Willoughby’s heart condition prevents him from doing much work anymore, so his adult son plans to live with him to help make his mortgage payments.

Willoughby’s house was sponsored by the Myers Park Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, N.C. Members of the congregation who joined the work crew for the week included volunteers who also have participated on mission trips to Ekwendeni, Malawi, in conjunction with the Presbyterian church there. In 1996, several members of the group joined a Habitat Global Village mission trip to the same community and built with Habitat Malawi.


Florida: Youthbuild
By Rebekah Graydon

With their tool belts strapped on and sweat rolling down their cheeks, the young men volunteering on one of the Fairway Oaks houses in Jacksonville blend right in with the hundreds of other Jimmy Carter Work Project volunteers on site. The only thing that sets them apart is one word on their T-shirts: inmate.

The youth are working on the build site through a partnership between HabiJax and Youthbuild, an optional youth and community development program that teaches incarcerated youth job and leadership skills while they work toward their GEDs. At the end of the day, the young men load up a van and return to the youth detention facility, where they serve their sentences.

To some people, they are classified as the proverbial rotten apples. Jacksonville city contractor Randy Warren sees them a little differently.

“If someone doesn’t love them—and it’s not the mushy kind of love, but the tough love, the disciplined love—they won’t get it anywhere else,” Warren says.

Youthbuild is not required, nor does it reduce the inmates’ sentence. But through the program, those who wish to participate and meet requirements such as being between 18 and 24 years old, economically disadvantaged and in need of educational and vocational training, can volunteer.

The typical day of a Youthbuilder includes vocational instruction in a construction trade, time for GED schooling and homework. One day a week is dedicated to activities including leadership development classes, counseling and guest lectures.

Kelsey Thomas, a 21-year-old participant in the program, says Youthbuild has improved his attitude, even though working construction in Florida’s summers means a lot of hot, sweaty labor—a factor that prompts many of his fellow inmates to stay inside.

“You have to look past that and think about your future,” he says. “Jacksonville’s growing.”

With the construction skills Thomas has learned through Youthbuild, he plans to apprentice himself in this growing industry and someday have his own business.

“That’s what the program is really about,” he says. “Change.”


New York: Incredibly Need
By Pat Curry

Rats. Bugs. Crack vials and needles among the litter. Graffiti memorializing drug dealers gunned down on the streets. Cold water and no heat in the winter. These are just some of the conditions Habitat for Humanity helps families escape in New York City.

The numbers are staggering. A quarter of a million are on the waiting list for public housing, and the average wait for Section 8 housing vouchers is eight years.

“The median price of a two-bedroom condominium in Manhattan is $400,000,” says Roland Lewis, executive director of HFH New York City. “If you’re a family starting out, ‘Where do we live?’ is becoming a rhetorical question.”

The issue of affordable housing has officially been labeled a crisis in this city of eight million people, where housing costs have risen at rates far outstripping both inflation and the average income of renters. Current estimates are that 225,000 housing units are needed to meet the need, five times more than the number of units constructed in the last decade.

And the city is losing ground every year. It loses between 14,000 and 18,000 affordable housing units a year to fire and destruction, while only 10,000 new units go up.

“The cost of land and construction has created a situation where only the wealthiest can afford unsubsidized housing,” says Peter Vallone, the New York City Council Speaker and a candidate for mayor. “The crisis is producing homelessness and driving the middle class out of the city.” He estimates that it would take a budget allocation of $1 billion a year for 10 years to fill the need that exists today.

Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, a resident of Harlem, says that part of the problem is that there has not been an organized effort to build affordable housing in the last 15 years. In 1999, the city devoted $336 million to affordable housing, 40 percent less than it did in 1989.

“Without that, the market drives it,” she says.

And the market is white hot. Residential vacancy rates are less than 5 percent here, and with a boom economy that has created significant wealth (Wall Street paid out $13 billion in bonuses to employees last December, according to the city’s comptroller), developers are focusing their attention on building units that sell for $500,000 to $1 million.
Ironically, Habitat has been part of that process. Its first project on the Lower East Side helped transform a neighborhood from a slum into a desirable area.

“It was desolation,” Roland Lewis recalls. “The drug traffic and the crime made you feel like you were walking into a Mad Max movie. Now it’s beautiful, and those buildings were the key. We see new construction going up all around them.”

Government owns an extensive number of buildings throughout the city, the result of the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s that had landlords walking away from their properties or torching them for insurance. Those dilapidated properties fell to the city, which now is selling appropriate properties to Habitat for $1 for rehabilitation.

There is land in the city that could be used for housing, but obtaining it would be complicated. Forty percent of the city’s land stock is set aside for industry. Other parcels sit vacant, owned by companies that are simply waiting for prices to peak before they sell.

Former city council member Sal Albanese came to New York in 1959 from Italy. His mother supported a family of five as a garment worker; they lived in an apartment that cost $30 a month. Today, the city’s population is 40 percent immigrant, but those families would be lucky to fine any apartment for less than $750 a month.

Leon Gelzer, a new Habitat homeowner, works for the Northeast Brooklyn Community Development Corp., selling affordable housing to first-time homebuyers. The obstacles to affordable housing in New York, he says, include a lack of vacant land and the inability of many first-time homebuyers to qualify for traditional mortgages. The affordable housing the Gelzer markets sells for $198,000, and requires a down payment of nearly $20,000. Mortgages average more than $1,300 a month. Buyers typically are city and state employees, such as police officers, teachers and bus drivers—hardly the class of “working poor” that most people would consider eligible for affordable housing initiatives. But an annual income of $50,000—what people in many parts of the country would consider decidedly middle class—just doesn’t go very far toward housing in the city.

Along the efforts of government, the city’s faith communities have played a tremendous role in adding to the stock of affordable housing. Often the only institutions that stay when communities decline, they have taken a leadership role in building and rehabbing tens of thousands of units throughout the five boroughs.

The work of Habitat to create affordable housing that enhances traditionally undesirable neighborhoods is just one part of the effort that’s needed to provide all New Yorkers with safe, decent shelter. Lewis sees the goal as not only attainable, but necessary.

“Amazing wealth is being created, and it’s heating up the housing market to the point that the people who provide critical services can’t afford to stay here,” he says. “We won’t survive as a society if the nurses, teachers and fire fighters don’t have a place to live.”


New York: The Subway
By Pat Curry

Freelance writer and veteran JCWP volunteer Pat Curry traveled to New York City to report for Habitat World. Here she relates her experiences with one of New York’s most famous institutions: the New York City subway.

The volunteer handbook for the New York site of the 2000 Jimmy Carter Work Project said the New York City subway was clean, safe and cheap, a great way to get around the city. But everything I had ever heard about it said it was not safe for a woman to travel on her own after dark.

For days during the JCWP, I managed to avoid riding the subways, catching rides between the sites and various events. But halfway to Shea Stadium to watch a Mets game—we had been given free tickets—the driver turned to me and said, “You can get back by yourself, can’t you? I have to take the kids home to Brooklyn.”

It was my worst-case scenario. I had never even been in a subway, and now I was faced with being there by myself, late at night, with Harlem as my destination. I was terrified.

At the game, I scanned the section for familiar faces from the YMCA where the out-of-town JCWP volunteers were housed. I asked two male volunteers how they had gotten to the game, hoping they had come by car. When they said they had taken the subway, I asked if I could tag along.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship—me and my buddy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. By the end of the week, other volunteers were asking me for directions, and I know the answers.

The volunteer handbook, I found, was mostly right. At $1.50, you couldn’t beat the price. As long as I didn’t exit the system, I could ride as far as I wanted one-way on a single token. The subway was relatively clean, although the sight of an obviously well-fed rat scampering across the tracks one night was a bit unnerving. And I did feel safe, because the stations and trains were busy and well lighted.

The best part, though, was the people. I love to watch people around me, to get a glimpse of their lives. In an odd sort of parallel, the subway system is a bit like Habitat in that it’s a place where you meet people you might never seek out. With such an extensive system and so much congestion on the streets overhead, just about everyone rides the subway. Young give up their seats to old, rich stand shoulder to shoulder with poor, white sits next to black sits next to brown. You can hear a dozen conversations in different languages, and spot the college students by the books they read. The frequent riders are the ones who know the route so well they can doze, unafraid of missing their stops.

Often, you can figure out where you are just by looking at the people around you. At the Wall Street station, the riders step on in tailored suits. At Times Square, there are lots of tourists. At 50th Street on the 1,9 line, you can set you watch by the attire and the carry-ons of the riders, because that station is the one closest to the theaters on Broadway. If there is a preponderance of men and women dressed all in black, carrying large, oddly shaped cases, it must be around 7 p.m. because they are musicians on their way to play in the musicals with 8 p.m. curtains. If there are men in tuxedos and women in sequins, it must be between 10:30 and 11 p.m., because the final bows were taken some time after 10.

Even the musicians in the stations are a lesson in diversity. No Muzak here. The background sounds included African drumming, a solo saxophone, Irish fiddling, and flat-out terrible banjo.

But my initiation into the world of subway ridership was nothing compared to the experience of another JCWP volunteer, whose tale was told so many times I’m sure it grew in its mythic quality.

The same night I rode the subway for the first time, an elderly volunteer named Skip had the same experience. His ride to the ball game could not take him back to the YMCA. He, too, had no experience in navigating complex public transportation systems. So he stepped on to the first train that stopped at Shea Stadium and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, fellow passengers,” he said. “Can anyone tell me how to get to 135th Street in Harlem?”

Advice was quickly given, and assistance rendered in changing trains at Times Square.

Once on board an uptown-bound train, Skip repeated his plea.

“Excuse me, fellow passengers, can anyone tell me how to get to 135th Street in Harlem?”

This time, the passengers became even more involved. This elderly white man from out of town must be confused. They gently told Skip that he didn’t want to go to Harlem by himself late at night.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m staying in Harlem at the YMCA.”

They were undeterred in their belief that Skip had no business getting off the subway at 135th Street and walking to the YMCA alone late at night. (It was ignorance on their part of the revitalization in Harlem. I would do exactly the same thing with no trouble two nights later.) At 96th Street, a common transfer point, a rider called information on his cellular phone for the address of the YMCA. He then hailed Skip a cab and offered to pay his fare.

Could this really happen in New York? Isn’t that where people stand by and do nothing while someone is beaten to death in the streets? Why would anyone help some old man who’s lost on the subway?

Maybe it’s the “underground of goodness” that one volunteer told me was his reason for traveling from Texas to New York for the build. The more you do things like this, he said, the more people you find who do things like this. Maybe it’s like the homeowner who wondered aloud why “all these people are here volunteering,” then in the next breath said she would volunteer again because after receiving so much, it would be selfish not to share with others.

It makes perfect sense, actually, that Skip made it back to the YMCA that night safe and that more than 100,000 families have safe, decent shelter. We’re all fellow passengers. Sometimes we just need a little help connecting to the right train.


New York: Homeowner Beverley Smith
By Pat Curry

It is an understatement to say that Beverley Smith’s life has changed since she moved into her Habitat home in April 1998. With her children living in safely, she wants to help other children in her new neighborhood, exposing them to the culture of Harlem and teaching coking classes in her home. In February 2000, she was elected preident of the condominium association. With the addition of the 10 units at 233 West 134th St., there are now 16 Habitat families there. With the association and homeownership to back her up, she has fought against the dumping that was rampant in the neighborhood. During the Jimmy Carter Work Project, she was honored by HFH New York City as its “Family Partner of the Year.”
When she and her daughters—April is now 24; Marie, 14; and Mary, 10—were living in Bedford-Stuyvisant, she didn’t even call their apartment a home.

“It was a shelter,” she says. “There were holes in the kitchen and the ceilings in the bathroom. Sometimes in the bathroom, you had to use an umbrella.”
The children would come home to find garbage strewn on the sidewalk and vagrants asleep on the steps. Gunfire was constant and the girls were never allowed to play outside.

“People would stand outside and shoot at the stop sign,” Beverley says. “You were blessed if you made it inside at night.”

Despite their significant age differences, all three girls slept in one room. They never invited friends over, and because of the water damage to the ceilings, they had stopped putting up a Christmas tree. The last two years before they moved into their Habitat home, they opened Christmas gifts in the kitchen. Teachers called Smith regularly to discuss behavior problems with her daughter Marie.

Twice, Smith tried to move her family out of the building, but couldn’t afford the rent.

When she got the phone call at work that she had been approved for a Habitat house, she burst into tears.

“I was so happy,” she says. “I just had to hug someone.”

A financial counselor with New York City’s Health and Hospital Corporation, Smith was working on a bachelor’s degree in psychology when she was approved for her house. The effort of working, raising three daughters, going to school and doing her sweat equity hours was exhausting.

“Some nights I cried,” she says. “It was hard, and some people didn’t understand. But I always say, ‘Don’t say you can’t do something. Can’t comes in cans.’ The sweat equity was therapeutic for me. When I moved here, my soul would reflect that it was mine.”

She still smiles when she thinks of the volunteers who came out to work with her on her house. She remembers their attention to detail. Doing a job well wasn’t good enough; everything had to be just right.

With the extra space she now has, Beverley created a meditation corner with a chair, complete with a Bible, a candle and a tabletop fountain. It’s a place where anyone in the family can go when they need some peace and quiet.

“That space is so important,” she says. “It’s an open door, 24 hours a day. When we go there, others respect it. That’s your quiet space. My 14-year-old will sit there and read.”

From a neighborhood where they were never allowed outside to play because of the danger of drive-by shootings, the children can now sit on their front steps and enjoy an ice cream cone. Smith can leave her doors open. The first year after they moved into the new house, Mary told her mother she didn’t want to go anywhere for Thanksgiving; she wanted to be at home. Their first Christmas in their new home, they not only had a tree, but also decorated the door and put candles in the windows. When they said Christmas prayers, Mary asked God to bless the people who lived in their old building and thanked him for their new home.

Marie’ lowest grade at the end of the school year was an 80, and she got a trophy for perfect attendance.

When Smith learned that the JCWP was not only coming to New York City, but to her block, she put in for a week of vacation to volunteer with the food service committee.

“It’s not the Caribbean islands,” she says of the food tent where she spend long hours wiping down tables and dishing out meals to grimy volunteers, “but I feel like it’s my own island.”

Her own sweat equity hours long done, she donated her hours to other families still working on theirs.

It may be one of the last times for a while that she can set aside this much time to help out. Now that she’s finished her bachelor’s degree, Beverley has her eyes set on a master’s in psychology to become a counselor.

“It’s all a blessing you can’t explain,” she says. “It’s like an open book and the chapters keep turning.”




Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, December 2000/January 2001.
This article may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
©2000 Habitat for Humanity International