With a shortage of affordable housing in communities across the U.S., it is more important than ever that we help low-income homebuyers learn about and take advantage of down payment assistance programs and the support they provide.
Code enforcement is a key way we can work together to provide safe homes and neighborhoods that create opportunities for everyone to succeed.
The need for global housing is so vast and the issues that surround it are so complex that Habitat works in many ways to partner with families and communities to create sustainable and sweeping change. That’s how we will realize our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Most people know Habitat for Humanity as a global nonprofit that partners with families to build or improve decent, affordable places to call home. That’s at the very heart of what we do.
The need for global housing is so vast and the issues that surround it are so complex that we also work in many additional ways to partner with families and communities to create sustainable and sweeping change. That’s how we will realize our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Learn more about just a few of these efforts:
Habitat’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter works to catalyze the private sector’s responses to the global need for affordable housing. Most of the world’s people build homes bit by bit as their families grow, as their limited finances allow and without access to the formal housing market. In response, Habitat works to expand innovative solutions, services and financing so low-income families can improve their shelter more effectively and efficiently.
Through ShelterTech, for example, the Terwilliger Center identifies and supports fresh ideas and start-ups working in the housing space. Participants receive access to expertise and catalytic funding to grow their businesses, plus the opportunity to grow their professional networks. Since the first accelerator, held in Mexico in 2017, ShelterTech has expanded to Kenya, India, Southeast Asia and the Andean region of South America.
Solutions have emerged from the program including sustainable waste processing for areas without sanitation services, 3D printing technology for home construction, a peer-to-peer lending platform for first-time homebuyers, and using augmented reality to connect families to designers and builders for remodeling and construction projects.
Through Habitat’s MicroBuild Fund, the Terwilliger Center also increases the availability and accessibility of housing microloans in 32 countries where financial institutions and services are limited. Microloans are different from traditional loans in that they have relatively short repayment periods, are for smaller amounts and require little or no collateral. In collaboration with financial partners, Habitat’s Terwilliger Center makes microloans available for families looking to expand or improve the quality of their homes, purchase land, or meet other housing-related needs.
In addition to raising our hammers, Habitat also raises our voices through extensive advocacy efforts in the U.S. and around the world. These efforts seek to improve what might be less visible aspects of housing like laws, regulations, systems and policies that affect adequate and affordable housing.
Within the U.S., nearly 400 Habitat affiliates are leading the effort to eliminate barriers to decent housing as part of our national Cost of Home campaign. Working together over the five-year advocacy campaign, we aim to influence policies that will help 10 million individuals access an affordable place to call home. Now two years in, despite the ongoing housing challenges, significant progress has been made. From calling for increased investment in housing trust funds to championing mortgage relief for homeowners impacted by COVID-19 across all 50 states, advocates have used their voices to fight for solutions to address the housing needs in their communities.
Globally, we use our voices to engage at all levels of government, and, in partnership, we work in five key areas: ensuring access to adequate housing, improving housing finance options, strengthening land rights, enabling stakeholder engagement and creating resilient housing.
From strengthening women’s land rights in Zambia to encouraging the European Union to prioritize housing in its global development policies to calling on governments around the world to protect housing as a first line of defense during COVID-19, Habitat is committed to creating more equitable housing policies and systems to increase the scale at which we work.
Habitat helps families across the world improve their water, sanitation and hygiene systems, including during emergencies like disasters and COVID-19. We help residents install water kiosks in the heart of communities, creating access to clean water for washing, cooking and bathing. In addition to reducing health concerns posed by unsafe water, the kiosks also reduce the timely burden of fetching it, freeing residents from hours walking miles while carrying heavy loads of water, often from compromised open sources.
Every WASH initiative is developed to meet the needs of a given community. In Guatemala, where an estimated 85% of wastewater is left untreated and is often discarded into local water sources, Habitat Guatemala adds sanitary latrines to existing homes to reduce pollution and improve the health of families, farmlands and communities.
Habitat Cambodia staff and volunteers lead children through hygiene demonstrations to encourage improved practices. Habitat Macedonia has extended microloans to help hundreds of rural villagers eliminate their dependence on hazardously placed open wells and instead connect to their region’s safer central water system.
Habitat’s decades of work have shown us people thrive when they have a safe and stable home in a safe and stable community. For this reason, it is important to think about the whole neighborhood — not only the house — that Habitat homeowners and other residents will call home.
Through our neighborhood revitalization work, Habitat helps engage partner organizations and empower community leaders to respond to the needs and aspirations of their neighborhoods. By ceding the leadership role to residents, we can help ensure that this transformational effort will continue long after Habitat. To guide their efforts, residents use Habitat’s Quality of Life Framework, a data-driven and customizable approach to improving neighborhoods. This framework provides a road map for holistic change based on the unique gifts, dreams and concerns of each individual neighborhood.
For communities where safety is a priority, the framework helps residents set out steps to reduce the opportunity for crime — such as establishing after-school programs, improving lighting in public spaces or setting up a neighborhood watch. For a community in a food desert, the framework might lead them to set up a community garden or start a local farmer’s market to help them increase access to healthy food.
Whatever path they decide on together, through the bond of their shared neighborhood and the camaraderie and trainings offered by Habitat’s neighborhood revitalization work, community members have an increased capacity and motivation to overcome barriers to sustainable change.
Rather than always starting new, Habitat has found that big changes in accessibility, affordability and safety can be accomplished through smaller cost-effective repairs and renovations that allow vulnerable homeowners to remain securely in their homes.
In the U.S., many older adults find their homes unsuitable for their needs or lack access to resources to make their homes livable and safe as they grow older. That’s why Habitat developed Housing Plus, a comprehensive aging in place strategy that uses a person-centered approach considering everything from lifestyle to type of home and allowing Habitat to address needs holistically.
In many parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, energy poverty — where residents either pay an exorbitant amount of their income to access utilities or are forced to go without — is a widespread issue that leaves those with the lowest incomes trapped in a perpetual cycle of poverty. But through the Residential Energy Efficiency in Low-Income Households project with USAID, Habitat is able to help families in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia make energy-efficient improvements that reduce their energy costs and improve their comfort and health.
In Guatemala, many families who have been excluded from basic services like electricity rely on indoor wood-fueled fires to prepare meals. The smoke from these fires lead to high rates of respiratory illness, especially among infants — which can prove fatal. Habitat Guatemala works with these families to install smokeless stoves, which eliminate indoor smoke and lower the risk of burns from cooking over an open flame.
They also cut the amount of wood needed to cook almost in half, saving families money and time. The stoves are often combined with a water filter and sanitary latrine to elevate the overall health of the home and the family inside. Families are involved in the entire process and learn how to assemble, use and maintain each product.
From investing in start-ups that disrupt the status quo to enacting policies that provide clear pathways to homeownership to partnering with families in new and exciting ways, Habitat can extend our reach and increase our capacity to help make sure that everyone has a safe, decent and affordable place to call home.
As part of Habitat for Humanity’s ongoing hurricane recovery efforts, generously supported by AbbVie, Habitat works with local businesses to help families in Puerto Rico repair homes affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria.
In the coastal town of Salinas, Puerto Rico, Javier Cosme, a carpenter for PEC Contractors, worked to patch holes in a roof that had been damaged by Hurricane Maria. Whenever it rained, water leaked into the rooms below, affecting the day-to-day lives of a family of three. Javier was making the repairs as part of Habitat for Humanity’s ongoing hurricane recovery efforts, generously supported by AbbVie, a research-based global biopharmaceutical company and one of the largest employers on the island.
The family was so grateful for Javier’s work to repair their roof, they offered him and his crew lunch every day. “They want to give what they didn’t have, you know, to make us feel well, when on the contrary, we’re trying to help them,” says Javier, in his native Spanish.
Since 2019, Javier has worked with PEC Contractors, a local small business, to help families in Puerto Rico repair homes affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria. “I solve all the situations that come up along the way in the project,” says the 43-year-old father of two, who does a “bit of everything” in his role as a carpenter, including brickwork, painting and electrical work.
Like the families he helps, Javier understands the importance of having a safe place to call home. After Hurricane Maria, he and his family were forced out of their own house, which was severely damaged by the storm. “I’ve struggled to lift my home back up because of the same thing, but I have the knowledge and ability to fix it,” says Javier, who has been working with his family to rebuild. Javier taught his wife, Karla, his 19-year-old daughter, Lyneshka, and his 18-year-old son, Javier, construction skills to help bring their home back to life. “They learned everything,” Javier says proudly. “From taking down what was left, which was wood, to binding cement to laying blocks to everything.”
After the unprecedented 2017 storms, AbbVie donated $50 million to Habitat to help families and communities recover through a holistic program that focuses on home repairs, helping homeowners secure land tenure, advocacy work — and workforce development.
“We are committed to helping families affected by the devastation of Irma and Maria by building and repairing homes in Puerto Rico, and ensuring safe, and resilient shelter,” says Claudia Carravetta, vice president, corporate responsibility and global philanthropy at AbbVie. “This commitment includes creating opportunities for training and employment, which is necessary to help the Puerto Rican economy and families fully rebuild after these disasters.”
“Our work in Puerto Rico targets home repairs, and it also helps build small businesses,” says Kevin Campbell, managing director of Habitat’s Puerto Rico recovery program. “It’s all part of a purposeful strategy to increase the capacity of the construction labor force by training new workers and contribute to the economy by hiring local contractors.”
Ultimately, 650 homes will be repaired through the hurricane recovery program.
“Our work in Puerto Rico targets home repairs, and it also helps build small businesses. It’s all part of a purposeful strategy to increase the capacity of the construction labor force by training new workers and contribute to the economy by hiring local contractors.”— Kevin Campbell, managing director of Habitat’s Puerto Rico recovery program
Businesspeople like Elizabeth Sánchez, owner of PEC Contractors, have benefitted from the steady work the Habitat program brings to them. Javier, who she describes as having a “gift with people,” was one of 10 new team members she was able to employ as a result of working with Habitat. So far, her company has repaired 38 hurricane-damaged homes. “Thanks to Habitat, and to the growth that I’ve had, I’ve been able to buy a lot of equipment, like trucks, that I didn’t have previously,” says Elizabeth.
In addition to working with local small businesses, like PEC Contractors, Habitat recently partnered with a local private university to create Habitat Builds Puerto Rico, a 5-week program that teaches skills like masonry, plumbing and carpentry for those interested in entering the construction field.
Javier credits working to repair homes with Habitat as a key part of helping him to support his family throughout their own rebuilding process, as well as allowing him to do good in the world. “It’s benefitted me,” says Javier. “But also it’s being able to serve and be useful to other people.”
He hopes to put the final touches on his home soon. “I still need to finish the bathroom and put up doors and windows,” Javier says. He and his family can’t wait to celebrate holidays and milestones again under their own roof.
Like so many homeowners affected by the storms in Puerto Rico, Javier is looking forward to a bright future in safe and stable home where his family can thrive. With AbbVie’s support, Habitat continues to pursue multiple avenues to that future by creating economic opportunities for workers like Javier and Elizabeth and making more repairs possible for the families they serve, ensuring that both families and communities are more resilient to future disasters.
Habitat for Humanity International board member Ronald Terwilliger reflects on the second anniversary of Habitat’s Cost of Home U.S. advocacy campaign and why he is a longtime supporter of Habitat’s work.
In the following essay, originally published June 10, 2021, Habitat for Humanity International board member Ronald Terwilliger reflects on the second anniversary of Habitat’s Cost of Home U.S. advocacy campaign and why he is a longtime supporter of Habitat’s work.
During my 50-year career as a homebuilder, I’ve seen firsthand the difference that a stable home can make. A home is the most basic level of infrastructure. A home shapes every part of a person’s life, and so too the direction of our communities and our economy.
While I know the transformational potential that a safe, affordable and healthy home makes in the lives of families, I also know how serious the housing affordability challenges are today in the U.S. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 17 million U.S. households were paying half or more of their income on a place to live.
We already had a shortage of affordable homes before the pandemic, and now our nation’s housing supply is at historic lows for entry-level homes for purchase. Builders often find that, even when land is affordable, houses in disinvested communities — urban and rural — cost more to purchase and repair than could be recouped in resale. There is no incentive to buy and invest in the repairs needed to make these homes decent. This reality leaves these communities and homeowners stuck in a downward spiral.
This is one of the many reasons I have been a dedicated supporter of Habitat for Humanity for more than two decades. Habitat works and builds in these communities. As co-chair of Habitat’s U.S. advocacy campaign, I know that public policies can help provide the solutions these communities need.
The pandemic has further exposed the need to ensure long-term affordability, showing that even a slight change in a family’s income could make their cost of home no longer affordable.
Reflecting on the campaign’s first two years, I’m struck by how the COVID-19 pandemic has made achieving housing affordability even more difficult. The pandemic has further exposed the need to ensure long-term affordability, showing that even a slight change in a family’s income could make their cost of home no longer affordable. Additionally, it has highlighted the role that housing policies have played in causing our nation’s racial inequities and the role they must play in remedying them.
When we first launched Cost of Home in June 2019, we didn’t foresee a global pandemic or a national reckoning on systemic racism, but we knew that, to maximize our potential for impact, the five-year campaign would need to remain agile. I’m proud that this agility allowed the campaign to play a critical role in responding to exacerbated housing needs as a result of the pandemic and that the campaign’s commitment to advocating for anti-racist housing and land-use policies at the local, state and federal levels has helped us to respond to the national imperative for racial equity.
A few examples:
Over the past year, Sussex County Habitat in Delaware has worked with other housing providers, legal aid societies and collaborative organizations to increase the amount of funding available for renters and homeowner emergency assistance payments in response to the pandemic. As a result of this advocacy effort, Delaware offered housing assistance to low-income households experiencing COVID-related job loss. Through CARES Act dollars, the state provided $20 million each for homeowner assistance and renter assistance, which will support more than 4,000 individuals.
In Florida, Habitat Broward advocated for the creation of a county racial equity task force. In December 2020, Broward County Commission finalized and approved the creation of a task force to focus on identifying systemic and racial inequities and the development of a plan to eliminate racism and create greater equity in Broward County. The Racial Equity Task Force will consist of 37 members from a broad cross-section of the communities that have been negatively impacted by systemic and institutional racism.
Federally, the American Rescue Plan Act passed earlier this year included $9.96 billion for a homeowner assistance fund, which was a key Cost of Home priority to ensure families financially impacted by the pandemic could remain in their homes. The fund enables all 50 states to offer direct assistance to homeowners who are behind on their mortgage or facing foreclosure due to the pandemic.
In total, more than 4 million people have increased access to an affordable place to call home, thanks to local Habitat affiliates, partners, volunteers and community members across the country’s efforts to change policies and systems.
The past two years have not been easy, but I’m encouraged by our progress and optimistic about the opportunities that lie ahead. Even with the crucial resources and protections that have been provided by Congress and local and state governments to families impacted by COVID-19, more action and support are needed at all levels of government to help ensure that all families can participate in our nation’s economic recovery and achieve long-term stability and security.
Currently, at the federal level, several bills moving through Congress would make high-impact investments in housing infrastructure and should be priorities for an economic recovery and infrastructure package. A pair of bills would help housing providers — like Habitat — convert dilapidated homes into affordable homeownership opportunities, focusing on neighborhoods where the for-profit, private sector is unable to do this on its own.
The Neighborhood Homes Investment Act would create a tax credit to remove financial disincentives to investing in these properties. The Restoring Communities Left Behind Act would ensure that newly rehabilitated and created homes are affordable to residents and part of an overall strategy that includes neighborhood residents and local businesses in their community’s economic recovery.
These investments, coupled with local and state policy change, can begin to unlock economic recovery and help ignite a virtuous cycle of rising home values that removes disincentives to broader neighborhood reinvestment while creating thousands of jobs, remediating urgent health hazards, and narrowing our nation’s racial wealth gap. Fixing our housing supply shortage and repairing our deteriorating housing stock are critical infrastructure investments that will pay enormous dividends for our economy, health and overall wellbeing.
Star loves winding down with her family in their modern-style Habitat home after a busy day. Evenings are filled with joy and laughter when her family gathers together for movie and game nights.
Star loves winding down with her family in their modern-style Habitat home after a busy day. Evenings are filled with joy and laughter when her son, 17-year-old Star’Shine; her fiancée, Jasmane; and her fiancée’s two sons, 11-year-old DeAndre and 9-year-old Jayden gather together for family movie and game nights.
During the day, the boys often escape to the large front yard to play basketball or football – or any game that ends up with something “stuck on the roof,” Star says with a laugh.
Star, who once worked as a union sheet metal worker, had been volunteering for Habitat for Humanity of Kansas City for two years when she decided to apply to become a Habitat homeowner herself.
“I love all of it,” she says, recalling volunteering on builds. “Having that construction background, I was able to just jump in there like ‘No, I got my own tools. I got this. Just tell me where you want me.’”
While volunteering leveraged Star’s existing skills, as a future homeowner she was able to learn valuable new lessons about managing her budget through Habitat’s financial education classes. “They teach you longevity of keeping your credit where it needs to be and building more,” she says.
The learnings from those classes and being able to pay an affordable mortgage, half of what she once paid in rent, gave Star a strong foundation to start her own HVAC business. “I was able to step out on my own and buy tools as I went, if I didn’t already have them, and just really step into entrepreneurial living and business ownership,” she says.
Star’s savings also went toward Star’Shine’s education when the local school district lost its accreditation. “I was really, really worried about this,” says Star. “I was blessed enough to be able to get my home the summer before he started freshman year. So, with the money that I saved, I was able to send my son to private school.”
After completing the homeownership program, Star was inspired to get more involved with her local Habitat. “I sit on the Habitat Kansas City Pride Build committee,” she says. “So I help ensure that the organization is able to be at all LGBTQ events, and folks can know about them and utilize them.”
Star is no stranger to advocacy work. She founded her own nonprofit in 2016 to address service gaps experienced by the LGBTQ community in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, and she recently added a program to address housing needs. Star’s early experiences fueled her passion for giving back. She experienced housing instability as a teen and into her early 20s and faced discrimination because of her sexual orientation when seeking help and services.
“It’s like one of those things, right? When you come from a place of lived experience,” says Star. “It has definitely guided me into doing the work that I do, and being able to know that I’m providing a solid foundation and something that I can pass down to my kid one day so that he knows that, ‘You always have somewhere to go, and I’m going to accept you for who you are at the end of the day.’”
All of Star’s hard work to provide a home where Star’Shine could thrive has paid off. He recently graduated from high school and will soon leave the nest and head for college. Meanwhile, Star is looking toward her next adventure, too. She and her family hope to purchase a multifamily property that will help ensure their financial security for the future while providing affordable housing to others.
“I want to be able to provide units for folks that are not price gouged, and people that make livable wages can afford to live there,” she says. Being a Habitat homeowner has helped create a pathway for Star to achieve this new dream. She says that her home has provided her with a launching pad to qualify for other opportunities to own, and now she knows she has what it takes to successfully maintain a home long-term.
