[OESY]

Philip Chalk is The Weekly Standard's production director.

[buffyt]

When we first got married we were poor and NO ONE built a home for US! We worked and saved and did without extras and bought our own little tiny first house back in 1975.

[Politically Correct]

Wow!
This was an eye opener for me.
Even I thought Communist Carter was at least occasionally building houses for the truely poor........guess not.

[Monterrosa-24]

How many mainline Protestant denominations support H for H? I know the largest Methodist Church in the Columbus, Georgia area pours in plenty of dollars and volunteers both for projects in Columbus and in Nicaragua.

One Habitat house got some publicity because there was a $40,000 SUV parked out in front. But the homeowner explained it was not her car, it was just her boyfriend's.

In the case of Nicaragua, the Habitat projects export Gringo labor to a country that has a labor surplus. Meanwhile the Church yields all the religious talk to other denominations like the Jehovah's Witness and let them establish the new congregations.

[basil]

Nothing is what it seems.

[madprof98]

The real draw isn't the eventual homeowner--it's the fleeting intimacy of a 21st-century barn raising in which volunteers can "rub shoulders and swing hammers and have a sense of community," as he puts it. "Feeling good and feeling right--and that's more valuable to a lot of Americans than the work they're actually volunteering to do."

There's a great deal of truth in this. Habitat is a favorite charity of leftists because of the "feel good" aspect. Not long ago, for instance, the Atlanta newspaper printed three separate stories about the same Habitat homeowner, a woman who was marrying one of the carpenters who worked on her Habitat build. The overkill on that story reminded me of Howard Dean's exortation to the Democrats to brag about their own values.

I don't think that the big problem with Habitat here is that its clients are less than destitute. I am more concerned about the way the Habitat homeowner selection process serves to reinforce dysfunctional behavior in inner-city communities. The typical homeowner I have met at Habitat builds is a single mother who shacks up with a guy, usually the father of some of her children. The guy often helps with the Habitat build, and he will live in the house with the woman. But she will be the homeowner, and he will remain a "guest." You might think that if he actually married the woman, he could get his name on the deed. But then there would be no deed--because then the official family income (the real household income) would be too high for the couple to quality for a Habitat home. Result: whole communities of single-mom Habitat families, almost all of them living in "shack-up" households with small kids. Doesn't seem to me that an organization with Christian pretensions should be encouraging this.

[garyhope]

I've got friends who LOVE Jimmah Cartah and who will not brook hearing a single discouraging word about the man. Personally I think the guy is a real nasty piece of work and an outright traitor and America hater.

I've always thought most do goodism and altruism is only occassionally about really helping the "poor" or "the children" amd more about "feeling good" or superior or smug about oneself. A lot of hype, condescension and hypocrisy.

But then, I'm a cynic about people's motives. Especially Democrats and hippie dregs.

[GVnana]

The Habitat affiliates' right of first refusal, for example, which allows it to buy a house offered for sale during the lifespan of the mortgage for no more than its original cost, can be used to prevent homeowners from realizing gains until their mortgage is fully paid. But if a house does rise in value, the homeowner is on the hook for the higher property taxes, which quickly can surpass the modest mortgage payment. Not surprisingly, a number of Habitat homeowners each year chafe at the restrictions, deed their houses back to affiliates, and walk away.

All of this could be rememdied if Habitat quit holding the mortgages and allowed the buyers to obtain conventional financing. This is indeed "paternalism" and keeps the low-income buyer exactly where they are. If the buyer has the wherewithal to want a house and maintain it, they're going to want to profit from it the same as anyone else.

The builders could still contribute as they do know. Just Habitat won't have a large real estate portfolio.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I'd be interested in knowing how the beneficiaries treat the homes that are essentially given to them (aside from token payments).

How do they fare years later in terms of depreciation and resale value, or does the buy-back plan obscure this?

[q_an_a]

this story is an example of how many Great charities become victims of "The World." By this I mean - a partner (Big name Store or Bank) wants results and they want "fairness" so the Christian chairity must cover up how God works through them and they become secular. Then they must be more effective every year. You can bet that Mr. Fillmore did not create those rules, I flew beside him once and we had this talk - about hijacked charities - the new rules come from a board.

The Touching stuff may or may not be true, the world is too sick to make book on who cheats and who does not, but some people are so PC they don't allow anyone to touch them or compliment them.

[Mamzelle]

Habitat never sold itself on providing housing for the abject poor, but for the poor who showed some initiative and who were likely to be able to work at the building site. That requires effort and ambition--the idea was to provide a hand-up for those who had enough character to be climbing the ladder. It think HH served its niche adequately as far as I have seen it working locally.

What I always got frosted about was that JC donated a few day's work every year...the media made it sound like he swung a hammer from dawn til dusk every day...

[thegreatbeast]

There is also the fact that H for H is one of the largest homebuilding outfits in the country, building on terms private contractors would drool over. How would you like to compete against an outfit that gets volunteer labor and materiel?