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The central HFH model is sound and successful even if some affiliates are straying from it and getting into trouble. A common misconception is that HFH hands o
by imglorp 11y ago
The central HFH model is sound and successful even if some affiliates are straying from it and getting into trouble.
A common misconception is that HFH hands out houses to poor people. HUD does that and it doesn't really work. You end up with "the projects", a swath of bad hood, buildings stripped of copper before they're completed, and a bigger disaster.
Instead, HFH involves the community, especially and centrally the prospective home owners, who are screened for having steady jobs, existing contributions to their community, and other indicators. Nobody could buy a house on one minimum wage income or even two, no matter their character, and that's the niche filled. The owners participate in the chapter via "sweat equity", where they might help with others' houses in addition to their own, alongside volunteers from the community. They buy the house from HFH with a low-interest mortgage; it's not a gift. Owners are also monitored and advised afterwards, and they often continue to hang around chapters helping the next batch. The result is pride in their home, bonds with the chapter, and an improved neighborhood.
I have no clue what the NYC chapter was thinking but it doesn't meet the core values, but we should concede inner city chapters have different challenges than suburban or rural ones.
Source: former chapter board member
- raverbashing 11y agoWhat's HUD?
- mindcrime 11y agoDepartment of Housing and Urban Development.
- wmt 11y agoSo the NYC HFH idea was indeed to use millions of federal money to kick out low-income families to the street in order to build houses for families who are better off than them? Damn, that's some ice cold ruthlessness.
- anon4 11y agoSuch is life in America.
- ryanackley 11y agoMost of your comment is in defense of HFH but it doesn't address anything about what was actually happening in NYC. Many of those who bought Habitat’s renovated homes earned around $50,000 a year The idea was to have Katz do the renovation work on Madison Street, instead of the charity doing it itself.
- imglorp 11y agoThe chapters are largely independent, so I have no information or defense re NYC. But yes, total plug there. The model, the national organization (unless they somehow got involved with NYC debacle?), and most of the chapters are organizations largely successful and worthy of people's volunteering and donation. The article was lacking background there. The chapters all need the HN kind of people helping out.
- mathattack 11y agoSeems like the model doesn't scale well. Hard to do this is very large cities where there isn't much white space to build. The city is so crowded that everything existing is already lived in, and zoning, politics and regulation make it very cost-prohibitive to build cheap housing.
- true_religion 11y agoWhite space?
- jacalata 11y agoIt means 'empty areas', presumably
- mathattack 11y agoUnbuilt land.
- imglorp 11y agoTrue, the model is low and slow. I believe rehabs of degrading row houses are more common in the urban chapters than scratch built: they buy, fix up, and sell to homeowners, involving them and community as my comment above. But yeah, the model doesn't work well for dense housing like condos so they aim elsewhere. If you want to house huge numbers of people quickly, this is not the way to go maybe.