Habitat World editor Bill Walsh tackles another issue--the ONE Campaign--that demonstrates Habitat's increasing interest in advocacy and outreach. See '...And All for One.'

Much to Celebrate, Much Yet to Do

I am immensely proud of what this organization has accomplished in the past several months. Despite well-founded insistencies that this is not a first-responder agency, Habitat nevertheless found a way to harness the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of volunteers, donors and sponsors so that some level of Gulf Coast reconstruction could begin long before the region was ready for boots on the ground.The wall frames that were built, then packed in trucks and shipped to the Gulf, have given potential homeowners a head start on renewed hope.

While the lights shone brightly on many of those efforts--in Rockefeller Plaza, on the National Mall, outside Minute Maid Park during the World Series--Habitat leaders were accomplishing another miracle, a much quieter, much more behind-the-scenes miracle--and, it seems to me, one that has much more long-term impact than the containerized wall panels.

The work you have done all these years has been wonderful, these leaders told affiliates around the country, but the times, they are achangin'. Now you have to do more. Much more.

Part of that urgency to build more homes stems, no doubt, from our success. While it took 25 years for Habitat to build its first 100,000 safe, decent, affordable homes, it took but five years to build the next 100,000. Acceleration of that magnitude is an inspiration to go faster, farther, higher.

Part of the urgency to increase building exponentially comes from the fact that the challenge is increasing in leaps and bounds, as well. Only 25 percent of Americans now work in jobs that provide middle-class wages, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Couple that with the fact that another 25 percent of jobs don't pay even a poverty-level income. Those are truly astounding and truly discouraging statistics. The minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, a stat that goes beyond astounding and discouraging on its way to mind boggling. If it had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the United States would be earning $23.03 an hour today, according to a report in USA Today.

The Census Bureau says 1.1 million more people fell into poverty in the United States in 2004. Many academics, using what they say are more realistic measures, insist that more than 50 million Americans now live in poverty or teeter unsteadily along its edge.

It has become fashionable to talk about poverty as lack of access--to jobs, to educational opportunities, to housing. Somehow it has gotten unfashionable to talk about poverty on a more basic level: Poor people don't have enough money. Perhaps we don't want to talk about it in such concrete terms because a few years back, when we overhauled the welfare system, we told everyone who needed a bit of help that they had to go get a job as a prerequisite.

And they did.That may have assuaged the Puritan work ethic that is part of our collective social fabric, but it has been about as effective as a New Orleans levee in a category 5 blow.


Given the disturbing news that Katrina exposed--that a huge portion of the population of a major American city did not even have the wherewithal to comply with an official order to evacuate--one would have thought we, collectively, as a nation, that our leaders in state capitals and in Washington, would be burning the midnight oil to find ways to overcome this national disgrace. In fact, we, collectively, turned away from Katrina issues with a speed that was as startling as it was disturbing.

"A profound transformation is occurring in America," broadcast journalist Bill Moyers said in an October speech to a wealth and giving forum. "Inequality is greater than it's been since 1929....Working people have to run harder and harder just to stay even, and our social stratification has become alarming. Our political class," Moyers said, "seems indifferent...."

You are reading this magazine.You are not indifferent. It is apparent that you believe that intervention works. It is also apparent that your belief has a strong foundation in fact: Habitat for Humanity has helped one million people out of substandard housing.Those folks, by and large, have seen their wages rise, their lives stabilize, their children thrive.

We must do more, and we will do more. We will build more, we will lift more people out of poverty housing. Perhaps more to the point, we will put more pressure on our elected leaders to work out their seemingly irreconcilable differences over how to overcome poverty at its roots.

Reconciliation is the underlying theme of this issue of Habitat World. Certainly, it is front and center in Shawn Reeves' account of his visit to Northern Ireland. It underpins Rebekah Daniel's report on gender and development.

With sufficient good will, the political reconciliation required for a renewed war on poverty is possible. Surely, Bill Moyers is wrong? Surely the men and women we elect to public office are not so indifferent as not to be up to the task? Surely we will vote them out if they are?

--Bill Walsh