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What’s the big deal about affordable housing?
Here it is in a nutshell:
When families can’t afford to own a simple decent home, everybody suffers.
Families are crowded into houses or apartments too small for the number of occupants. Or into houses that lack sufficient plumbing or are otherwise health hazards. Too much of their earnings have to go towards rent and not towards other investments that can improve their lives. They miss out on the positive economic benefits of owning a home and cycles of poverty and dependency continue. Then there is the tragedy and danger of homelessness.
When more families move into the middle class, we all benefit. We have the skilled workers we need for our businesses, schools and essential services. We gain more citizens paying taxes and contributing in others ways to the life of our community. Families that can take care of themselves are able to help others.
Hurricane Iniki tore through Kaua’i in 1992, damaging 80% of Kaua’i’s homes, completely destroying more than half. That was the precipitating event to start up a Habitat for Humanity chapter on our island. Since then, economic conditions, increase of land prices and the changing fortunes of a tourism economy have kept home ownership out of reach for many Kaua’i families.
Habitat for Humanity offers one of the surest ways to help motivated individuals improve their lives through home ownership.Through networks of volunteers and donors and its status as a nonprofit organization, Habitat mobilizes the resources needed to build simple, decent housing at a price low income Kaua’i families can afford.
The Habitat model is well known. What you may not know is that it is alive and well on Kaua’i and ready to increase the number of houses it builds each year. By the end of 2008, Kaua’i Habitat will have completed its 100th house. While we are justifiably proud of this accomplishment, we are more motivated by the continued need on Kauai for affordable housing. Over 1000 people remain on our waiting list.
We plan to address this problem by ramping up our capacity to complete more houses each year.
It took 15 years for us to build our first 100 homes.
We will scale up our capacity and build the next 100 homes in 7 years.
