Habitat for Humanity Provides Volunteers, Loan Assistance--and a Bible : Christian Finds a Fuller Life by Building Homes for the World’s Poor

Millard Fuller is fond of quoting a passage from Luke: “Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none.”

“That’s the only thing that works,” he says. “It’s the economics of the Bible.”

Fuller heeded that lesson two decades ago when he decided to save his failing marriage by giving away his fortune and refocusing his life.

Now, one of his projects, Habitat for Humanity, mixing “sweat equity” and “biblical economics,” is moving thousands of working poor families out of substandard housing and into their own basic but adequate new homes.

Habitat, whose volunteer carpenters include former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, has mushroomed since its founding in 1976.

2,000 Homes This Year

By 1980 it was in 11 American cities and three countries. Now it operates in 280 cities in the United States and Canada, plus 25 Third World countries. It has built more than 4,000 homes, including 1,200 last year. Habitat estimates that it will finish 2,000 homes this year and 4,000 in 1989.

The goal, Fuller says, is to reach 2,000 American towns and cities and 60 countries by 1996.

“We go where we’re invited, but we have the word out all over the world,” Fuller says. “We believe the poor need capital, not charity, and that’s what Habitat provides.”

Carter, involved with Habitat since 1984, will join about 1,000 other volunteers to build 20 homes in a down-at-heels neighborhood in southeastern Atlanta June 27-July 1 in Habitat’s most ambitious single project to date.

He has said Habitat is one of the few volunteer efforts to which he gives large amounts of time.

On one Habitat project, in which he helped renovate run-down homes in New York City, Carter recalls: “I had more fun and made more friends that week than any time since I left the White House.”

Habitat, Fuller says, uses volunteers and help from the private sector to make homeowners of the poor.

“Homeowners make better citizens and upgrade neighborhoods,” he says. “Someone is less likely to bust down a door or smash a window if it is his door or window.”

When a Habitat project opens in a city, a committee chooses homeowners based on need, willingness to help with the work and ability to repay, which eliminates the poorest of the poor but keeps most low-income families eligible.

“In general, recipients have to be too poor to go to a bank for a housing loan,” Fuller explains.

They are people like Evelyn Jackson, whose new home in Atlanta was recently completed. “This will mean so much to me and my children,” she says. “We’re all so happy. You don’t know how good it feels to have your own place.”

List Requirements

A recipient family must include children, and able-bodied members of the family are expected to help build their house, as well as others, paying only the value of the land and materials, at no interest, over 20 years. Payments average $150 to $180 a month, including taxes and insurance. The money is recycled to finance future homes.

With a few skilled carpenters and a bevy of volunteers, the wood-frame houses, up to three bedrooms, can be finished in less than a week at from $25,000 to $28,000, including land costs, in the United States. In developing countries the cost is far less.

Fuller says Habitat, based in Americus, is firmly rooted in the principles of fundamental Christianity, but it operates in countries such as in India where there are few Christians.

He said Christianity is not a requirement for participation but Habitat welcomes the chance to spread the word. A Bible is presented to new homeowners.

“It’s totally ecumenical,” he says. “Habitat includes every denomination you can think of.”

It was a point he stressed at a recent speech in Macon to a moderate faction of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The 53-year-old Fuller, a tall, thin man with a magnetic smile, noted that he was not a Baptist. But, he said, his life still is directed “by GAWD, and by JEEE-sus.”

He paused.

Pronounces Names Right

“You see,” he grinned. “I wasn’t raised a Baptist but I can still pronounce the names right.”

The crowd was his.

“Millard is contagious,” observed Bruce Gunter, director of a Habitat project in Atlanta.

Fuller’s persuasive powers came early. An Alabama native, he made his money with mail-order businesses he started in college, selling everything from Christmas greens to tractor seats and cookbooks.

His fortune soared. When he had banked $1 million by the age of 29 he shot for $10 million. “It was never enough,” he says. “It never would be enough.”

His chase of money became obsessive, and in 1965 his wife, Linda, left him and went to New York to think things over. He followed her and they decided to sell everything, give the money to churches and charities and reshape their lives.

He and his family went to Koinonia Farm in Sumter County near Americus, a Christian cooperative founded in 1942 by Baptist minister Clarence Jordan.

“He had come to form a community like the early Christians did, sharing all things in common,” Fuller says.

“The New Testament teaches clearly that there is no difference in races of people, that in Christ we were one, not divided. In 1942 in south Georgia that was still a new idea. It was pretty radical. Blacks and whites were working and living together, and it didn’t take a real long time to become unpopular.”

By 1954, when segregation became outlawed, area residents saw Koinonia as a part of the process that was changing the Southern way of life.

Through beatings, bombings and terrorism by night riders, Koinonia was reduced to four families but had regrouped by the mid-1960s when Fuller arrived.

He intended to stay a few months but stayed nearly five years.

Fuller and Jordan started several programs to help the rural poor, including job development and housing, especially for sharecroppers.

“I thought: ‘If it will work in Sumter County, it’ll work anywhere,’ ” he says.

Traveled to Zaire

Fuller went to Zaire, in Africa, for three years in 1973, with backing from Koinonia and the church.

He returned in 1976 after building more than 400 homes and incorporated Habitat for Humanity, separate from Koinonia Farm.

Habitat’s international headquarters in Americus finds money and volunteers for projects in developing countries. Domestic projects, with few exceptions, are responsible for their own fund raising, recruitment and staffing with advice from the Americus office.

Of the 150 workers at Habitat headquarters, about 100 are volunteers, receiving $25 a week and a room in one of several adjacent homes owned and renovated by Habitat.

Volunteers who stay more than three months get $300 a month and a place to live. Workers overseas--there are about 100--get the same, or $500 for a married couple, plus travel expenses and insurance. Those going abroad agree to stay three years.

A daughter of Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, a fervent Habitat backer, worked recently on a project in Uganda.

Substitutes for Governments

“Habitat is doing what federal, state and local governments should be doing,” Young said at a ceremony unveiling the Atlanta project.

Habitat hopes to build 75 houses in Atlanta by 1990. Thirty-one percent of the city’s housing is listed as substandard against a national average of 8%.

Organizers also hope to raise $1.2 million for initial financing for more homes.

Habitat operates on repayments and donations to its revolving fund and by resale of donated materials. It gets no federal money.

“If a company donates a luxury appliance we will install it,” Fuller says. “But we charge for it as if it were the basic appliance we normally would install.”

Habitat raised $18 million in 1987 and projects $30 million this year. Fuller, Habitat workers say, draws less than $30,000 a year and sometimes doesn’t take his full salary.

“The Lord provides,” Fuller says. “Write that down.”