Five of our seven family members are considered essential workers.

I provide administrative support to the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota. My husband, Jacques, works at the Minnesota Veteran’s Home. My oldest son does research at the University of Minnesota. My youngest son works in environmental services for a hospital. Another son works nights, and often overtime, at a grocery store.

Every day we leave the safety and comfort our home to support and care for the people in our community. Whenever one of us heads out, our family is reassured that our home will be here for us to return to. It saddens me that every family doesn’t have the same security a home provides and that the pandemic is making the housing problem that has existed for decades much, much worse. I know that struggle personally because, like so many other lower paid essential workers today, I once lived it. Difficult does not begin to describe what housing instability feels like.

In 1995, my husband and I were barely getting by on one income. We lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment. We had a toddler in tow and a baby on the way. At the time, my husband worked as a nursing assistant making $7 an hour while I stayed at home to care for our little one since childcare was beyond our budget. Living paycheck to paycheck, coupled with the threat of ever-increasing rent, exacerbated our struggle. Remembering what it was like to live under that constant stress back then, I can only imagine what a family in our position then would be facing today.

Thankfully, we found a solution: Habitat for Humanity. Habitat’s homeownership program forever changed our lives. Knowing that we would have the stability of an affordable monthly mortgage payment, that we wouldn’t have to move anymore and that we had enough space to eventually house five children lifted a huge weight off our shoulders. The affordability of our home gave us a life full of possibility — allowing me to go back to school, my husband to maintain a stable career, my children to pursue their passions. It gave each of us a future.

Today, however, the future is uncertain due to COVID-19. Since April, millions have lost their jobs — forcing them to choose between paying their rent or mortgage and keeping the lights on, buying food and other basic necessities. When faced with the need to decide between covering the cost of home and life’s other essentials, you can’t win. And now, another month of late bills, missed payments and impossible decisions is fast approaching for too many.

As we shelter in place and practice social distancing, there are thousands of people for whom this isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. The uncertainty so many of us feel today, they have felt for a lifetime — if not generations. Additionally, the tragic killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has placed a spotlight on the inequities that have resulted from systemic and persistent racism, inequities that have kept people of color from achieving economic stability across generations. The pandemic and Floyd’s untimely death have challenged us all to recognize, acknowledge and change the ways our communities serve – or fail to serve – everyone, including our historically unequal access to health care and homeownership.

Affordable housing and homeownership happened for me and my family 25 years ago, and I have been an advocate for Habitat and for home affordability in Minnesota ever since. I tell my story because I know our family is not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of families living paycheck-to-paycheck who struggle to find and keep a stable place to live. Through advocacy, we can help raise awareness of this struggle, and through policy, we can help make systemic changes to help them thrive.

Earlier this year, I traveled to Washington, D.C. to join Habitat’s national Cost of Home campaign in sharing our message about the need for home affordability on a national level in the U.S. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — or CARES Act — passed by Congress and signed into law on March 27 included some measures to provide economic relief for families and businesses, but it must go further. There is still much more to be done to ensure that families have stable, affordable places to call home and that nonprofits, like Habitat, have the support and stability they need to continue serving others in this time of crisis.

Everyone needs and deserves a decent place to call home. Now more than ever, we need to tear down walls of disparity and discrimination and replace them with equality, inclusiveness and understanding. It is up to all of us to forge a path that will allow us to rebuild smarter and better. We can and we will get through this — together. Take action with us today!

To the graduating class of 2020, and to all of us,

Here’s something you might not expect to hear in a regular commencement speech: It’s time for us to unlearn much of what we think we know.

There’s been so much talk — and rightfully so — about the unprecedented nature of our times. It’s true. There is no challenge or crisis in recent memory that compares to the particulars of this public health pandemic, its ensuing economic instability, and the protests for racial justice in cities and communities everywhere. We are in uncharted waters. We all sail with our unwavering trust in an ever-present God to guide us.

“Unprecedented” is a word that casts an awfully big shadow, and those kinds of words can sometimes serve to obscure things that actually want — and need — to be illuminated. We can’t lose sight of what preceded this moment or of what this moment is showing us about ourselves and our society. We have to look back — and look around — before we can look ahead.

What we see is both good and bad. Our current circumstance is scary and stressful, and I think it’s safe to say that none of us are stepping into the tomorrow we might have imagined. But that’s been true for a lot of families around the world for a very long time. Families who have struggled to make ends meet, much less get ahead. Families who have suffered from redlining, racial inequality and the housing disparities that follow. And now their struggle is all the harder. None of this is new, it’s just laid bare. We live and labor in communities where determination and hard work aren’t always enough. Where inequalities and prejudices are among the strongest forces that shape daily lives.

And yet, at the same time, the stories of individual kindnesses and ingenuity are legion today, as they were so often before. In some ways, we’ve never been further apart. But we’ve also never been closer together. Neighbors caring for each other, communities rallying to fill the gaps in a frayed social safety net, unexpected figures stepping up to offer solutions, people coming together to make a difference for each other. Push has come to shove in so many places, and the push that survives is concern for others, solidarity with vulnerable groups, a sense of active citizenry and interconnectedness, the joy that comes from helping others.

When we see all of this, we should see the tomorrow we always should have been imagining anyway. And not just imagining, but actively building. If so many of us right now have a sense that we are all in this together, that our fates are intertwined, our health and well-being inseparable from those of our fellow citizens, then we absolutely must work every day — today and beyond — to make that actually be true.

The Persian poet Hafiz said that the words we speak are the house we live in. I’ve been on many build sites around the world, and the most important nail, the most important brick, is always the first one. We will never live in a better house if we do not — today — begin to speak about important things. Your voice matters.

Speak truth.

Live what you believe.

Stand with others.

Roll up your sleeves.

Don’t just participate in the systems that surround us. Do everything you can to change them — and yourself — for the better.

Let’s make this world a fairer place; let’s make our communities beacons of equality. Don’t just worry about your own needs and challenges; see those of all the people around you. Because when you do and when we join together, every improvement we make will envelop and uplift us all.

“Normal” wasn’t actually OK. “Unprecedented” can’t be a reason to look away.

Habitat for Humanity has always believed in the power of coming together to transform lives. That transformation story lives in the children who have grown up in the homes we help build. Their parents had the courage to take a deep breath and an enormous leap faith. How much we all can learn from the example they have set in applying action, sweat equity and sacrifice to bring a long-held dream to life! Not only for today, but for tomorrow. That kind of commitment is what we all need now.

Today, let’s begin to build a better house. For us all.

The success of Habitat for Humanity’s groundbreaking MicroBuild Fund, which has helped millions of low-income families around the world build or improve their homes, is the result of years of careful planning and the ability to attract like-minded and committed partners, according to a new case study out of New York University.

A case study of investment in housing

“Launching the MicroBuild Fund” follows the fund from the initial idea of creating an investment vehicle for housing aimed at low-income families to its rollout in 2012. The case study braids together the legal, business and policy issues that informed getting the fund off the ground and is the work of NYU’s Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship and Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

“This MicroBuild Fund case study is an invaluable and novel tool for the field to learn more about this innovative financial product and how it is providing safe, decent and durable homes to millions,” says Patrick Kelley, vice president of Habitat’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, which houses the fund.

A critical need for affordable housing worldwide

The case study also underscores the urgent and growing demand for safe and affordable housing, pointing out that by 2025, at least 1.6 billion people worldwide will be living in substandard housing or will be so financially stretched by housing costs that they will be forced to forgo other basic needs such as food, health care and schooling for their children. Habitat’s MicroBuild Fund seeks to address that demand by lending to financial institutions, which, in turn, provide small loans to low-income families to build safe, decent and durable homes. This type of lending supports an incremental building approach and helps families clear hurdles like lack of access to credit or land titles.

Since its launch, the fund has dispersed $132.5 million to 54 institutions in 31 countries. This has allowed those institutions to collectively grow their portfolios to $1.08 billion and help provide access to better housing for more than 2.1 million people. “The MicroBuild Fund has enabled financial institutions across the globe to provide new housing financial products and services and is having a ripple effect on the market as others adopt the model,” says Kelley.

Continuing analysis of MicroBuild’s impact

Additional case studies are planned with the goal of providing insights on how the MicroBuild Fund has had to adapt and change over the years to respond to market opportunities and challenges. Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm and investor in the MicroBuild Fund, is supporting the case study work.

“Improving housing market systems that enable families to achieve affordable shelter is critical to realizing our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live,” says Mike Carscaddon, Habitat for Humanity International’s executive vice president of administration, chief financial officer and chair of the MicroBuild Fund board of directors.

Bumak and his family are among those who now have a decent home because of the MicroBuild Fund. For years, Bumak and his wife, Saearng, sent their young children to live with grandparents because the couple could only afford to rent a tiny room in a dangerous area of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The couple saved whatever they could from their jobs selling ice cream and working in a garment factory, and eventually they were able to buy a plot of land and start building a house where they could all live together. The MicroBuild Fund made it possible for Bumak and Saearng to borrow small loans that helped them tile the floors, plaster the walls and install a metal roof. “We were so happy to move into this house,” Bumak says. “We were able to bring our family back together.”

A Habitat house is transforming the lives of Sonia’s family.

They, in turn, are helping to transform their neighborhood. Sonia, her husband and three boys live in the Washington neighborhood in Long Beach, California. It is among 10 U.S. communities where residents are working with Habitat and other partners to pinpoint ways to improve the quality of life of residents.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — along with General Motors, H&R Block, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo — are financially supporting the work. Affordable housing is a part of the path forward.

Sonia is grateful for the opportunity to purchase a Habitat home in the Washington neighborhood. “I stand in my kitchen, or sometimes in the backyard, and just say, ‘This is what I wanted for my kids.’” A place where her boys can be creative. A yard where they have been free to romp and laugh. “Here you can run, scream, play, jump — and the neighbors don’t complain,” Sonia says.

She also wants everyone’s children to be able to ride their bikes and walk to school and air out at the skateboard park in a neighborhood that is lovely and safe.

That’s where other community partners come in, including the local police, the parks and rec department and the middle school that sits in the heart of the neighborhood. “Right now, my neighborhood is nice,” Sonia says. “I know if everyone gets involved, it can be even more beautiful.”