The following issues have been identified by Habitat for Humanity International as essential to ending substandard housing. Video submissions should focus on one of the following topics, and state the sentence in the film.
Read and print these topics as a Microsoft Word document.
There are a number of reasons that some cannot access secure tenure including:
• They cannot afford to pay fees for documents and for land.
• Bureaucracy and red tape. In Egypt, the development of a home on agricultural land can take from six to 11 years. In Haiti, 176 steps are required to make legal land purchases. In Mexico, there are 117 steps to access building permits along with high fees that do not take the poor into account. As a result, the poor don’t even bother to try to access legal land and security of tenure.
• Housing is often built on public land owned by the state.
• Housing is often built on private property not belonging to the homeowner.
• Construction occurs without occupancy or construction permits.
• Renters in slums will often rent without formal contracts.
• Because formal financing from banks is not a promising option, and secure land is hard to afford and acquire, the poor have had to reverse the traditional housing development process.
• Development process: In a formal development process, one obtains legal tenure of site, puts in infrastructure, builds a house and then moves onto land. In an informal development process, one moves onto land, builds a house, puts in infrastructure, and then obtains legal tenure of site
A publication by the Cities Alliance explains that the poor are quite interested in changing their homes and living situations, but they will not upgrade or spend significant income on housing unless they have security of tenure.
The following are some examples of why we have to put a focus on women in order to make progress in ending global poverty:
• One out of four countries has a constitution or national law impeding women from owning land and taking mortgages in their own name.
• Not only are women more vulnerable to poverty, but decades of research has shown that when women get more resources they put their money into making sure their children have better nutrition, education, health care and housing. This creates a multiplier effect that strengthens families and communities over time.
• Expanding economic opportunity for women also decreases women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, trafficking and gender-based violence.
• Sometimes it’s as simple as having a gender expert on a project who designs the forms so that there is a space for two names – both the husband’s and the wife’s.
For more information please go to www.slamthedoor.org.
What is a housing trust fund? A national housing trust fund would establish a fund to provide local communities with funds to build, preserve and rehabilitate housing for people with the lowest incomes. It would provide resources for 1.5 million affordable homes over one decade.
Why is there a need for a housing trust fund?
• There is an affordable housing crisis.
• There is not one congressional district that has enough rental housing that is affordable and available to extremely low income families.
• There is a shortage of 2.8 million affordable rental units for people with the lowest incomes.
• As a result of the lack of affordable housing, families are paying more than 30 percent of their incomes in rent or live in substandard housing.
• Nationwide, more than 71 percent of extremely low income renter households spend more than half of their incomes for housing.
• There are 2 million fewer low-cost affordable housing units than number of poor households needing these units.
• Both rent and house costs are rising faster than incomes.
• Eighty-five percent of countries agreed that most new housing is geared to middle and upper income households, not working families.
Government spending
• Government spending for housing is on the decline due to the growing federal deficit and the focus on tax cuts.
• Three-quarters of people in need of government housing assistance are presently not served due to lack of funding.
• Since 1976, HUD budget authority has decreased while the overall U.S. government budget has increased by 76 percent.
It is found that a child living in a home is:
• More likely to graduate from high school and college.
• More likely to become a homeowner within 10 years of moving out of parent’s home.
• Likely to have a lower incidence of alcohol or drug abuse problems.
Habitat for Humanity’s support Habitat for Humanity supports a national affordable housing trust fund as a new source of revenue that will assist in the production of new housing and the preservation or rehabilitation of existing housing that is affordable. Ideally, an affordable housing trust fund would have a permanent, ongoing source of revenue that is not taken from an existing federal resource. For more information please go to www.nhtf.org.
