More Top Picks Best Kids Desks
player ready...There aren’t many builders these days that can boast not only of completing a new subdivision but also one that has no foreclosures.
But Habitat for Humanity Lake County can. The organization last week celebrated the completion of the final two homes in the 23-home Carter Crossing subdivision in Waukegan it started three years ago.
The group isn’t giving its tools much of a rest. Like its counterparts throughout the Chicago area, the Waukegan affiliate of the national organization is getting ready to acquire vacant land and dilapidated homes elsewhere and turn renters into first-time homeowners. At the same time, Habitat is expanding its mission by renovating foreclosures and offering quick external repairs to needy homeowners through its “A Brush with Kindness” program.
“We basically have too much to do right now,” said Julie Donovan, executive director of the Waukegan-based affiliate.
The mission of Habitat, which started in 1976, is to offer no-frills, affordable homes to “partner” families who demonstrate a need for housing and are able to repay 30-year, no-interest, no-profit loans. Participants also commit to a certain number of hours of sweat equity they accumulate from attending budgeting and home-maintenance classes and performing manual labor at job sites.
In addition to government funding, the local programs receive financial support and donated materials from individuals, corporations and faith-based groups.
While the housing industry’s downturn has, in effect, mothballed the plans of many for-profit developers, Habitat’s independently operated local affiliates remain very active and find themselves in the enviable position of having too many opportunities from which to choose.
Across the country last year, Habitat built 4,584 new homes, rehabilitated 710 and repaired 774. That compares with 4,838 homes built, 621 homes rehabbed and 527 homes repaired in 2008.
Tony Johnson’s home will be one of the properties that will make up this year’s building total.
In early 2009, the Waukegan resident started setting aside funds for a down payment on a house, but that plan was derailed in March 2009 when Johnson and his daughter, T’neyah, lost all their possessions in an apartment fire. A year and a day later, Johnson was participating in the groundbreaking for the three-bedroom home he will soon move into with his daughter in Carter Crossing.
Looking back, Johnson said the fire was the best thing that happened to the widower. He was accepted into Habitat’s program and began working toward the 500 hours of sweat equity required by going to job sites on Saturdays and taking classes for six months on financial management.
“They mean sweat,” Johnson said, who still has 100 hours of sweat equity to perform. “You do have to earn your way. It’s not like someone is giving you something. It just makes me more appreciative of what I have. I helped put the forms down for the foundation. I appreciate this house even more because I helped build it.”
While the building of homes like the Johnsons’ won’t stop, the shift to other priorities is intentional and a result of the hammering that consumers have taken since the plunge in home values and the rise in unemployment.
“We needed to move away from building new homes to helping with the mortgage crisis and the foreclosure crisis,” said David Tracy, executive director of Habitat for Humanity Chicago South Suburbs. “It’s a wonderful transition. It’s the right direction to take. Simultaneously, we can help families become homeowners, and at the same time we’re enhancing their investment by enhancing the neighborhood. The goal is to change a neighborhood, not just a home.”
Challenges remain, however. Tracy’s affiliate is acquiring foreclosed homes in Park Forest and Lansing but has found itself in competition with investors who know that to use Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds, Habitat’s purchase price has to be at least 1 percent below market value.
“(Investors) bid 1 percent higher,” Tracy said. “There’s good investors and bad investors. But, in general, getting the home in the hands of an owner is better than getting it in the hands of an investor.”
In DuPage County, the affiliate is halfway through a three-year, $4.4 million campaign to build 11 new homes and rehab seven foreclosures. Now it is beginning a $5 million capital campaign to fund its projects for 2012 and 2013.
In addition to its building and rehabbing efforts, the group is piloting programs to weatherize homes and help homeowners on fixed budgets with their home’s exteriors.
Sarah Brachle, executive director of the DuPage affiliate, worries not just about potential depletion of funds from strapped donors but also about what will happen when the housing market rebounds.
“The fact that the land is available more cheaply is great for us,” she said. “Land has always been our biggest challenge in DuPage County. Will the market turn and we’ll be back to where we were four years ago?”
Fresh from the ceremony marking the completion of Carter Crossing, Donovan said she thinks there will be a number of rehabs in her affiliate’s future.
More Top Picks Juicers
“People are starting to call us, saying ‘I have this house,’ ” she said.