Urban Woes Foil Effort to Improve Housing for Poor

They were supposed to be islands of hope, four townhouses hammered together by former President Carter and other volunteers a dozen years ago.

But hopes that they would provide poor families with a chance to own homes have been washed away by the drugs, gangs and joblessness that haunt Chicago’s West Side.

A developer who bought all four of the two- to five-bedroom wooden townhouses for $30,000 is wiping sewage from the floors of one unit and erasing obscenities scrawled on its walls by the last resident to be evicted for not paying rent.

Habitat for Humanity officials say the evictions may have been the first in the history of the group since it began in 1988.

The group has been highly praised for its idealistic housing ventures across the world. In this case, however, Habitat has admitted failure and given up on the project after years of frustration.

“There were good intentions, and we were going to help these people, and as it turned out, we weren’t able to help them in the way they needed help, and we shouldn’t have tried,” says Bill Freer, former chairman of West Side Habitat for Humanity, one of the group’s three branches in Chicago.

Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity operates worldwide and has more than 1,200 affiliates across the country, relying on volunteers to build housing and churches for the money to provide zero-interest mortgages. Last month, the group celebrated the building of its 50,000th house worldwide, a 1,000-square-foot home built for a family in Pensacola, Fla. Carter’s interest has long kept the group in the spotlight.

In the United States, the group had sold 13,685 housing units with only 101 foreclosures or buybacks through 1995, less than 1%, said Melanie McDonald, a spokeswoman for Habitat for Humanity International, based in Americus, Ga.

As of 1993, the latest year for which figures are available, 90% of those who purchased homes were current on their payments.

West Side Habitat for Humanity has had 23 such projects, and occupants have purchased 19 of them. It counts the four townhouses, first built by a now-defunct Habitat branch and taken over later by the West Side branch, as its only unsuccessful project.

Those who moved into the townhouses never intended to buy, said West Side branch Executive Director Stephanie Packard Bell. All were welfare recipients and none had enough money to pay off even the $25,000, interest-free mortgages Habitat offers, group officials said.

Finding suitable buyers proved impossible because drugs and gangs were everywhere in the neighborhood.

Habitat spent thousands of dollars replacing pipes and plumbing that were ripped out of the townhouses by burglars. The last resident was $2,500 behind on her $250-a-month rent when evicted.

“We don’t just put people out,” Bell said. “She kept promising that she was going to pay, but she never did.”

When the woman moved out last year, she left the water running, flooding the house, and sewage covered much of the floor, he said. The furnace, the hot water heater and all the cabinets in the kitchen were ripped out, and the walls were smeared with curse words.

The developer who purchased the properties, which were all rundown, plans to sell them again, once renovated.

Habitat officials say the experience has taught them an invaluable lesson. They say efforts must be more concentrated to achieve success in the inner city. That means instead of building or rehabbing several units at a time, they must change an entire block or even two blocks.

They also say working closely with community groups and police is essential to avoid the fate that befell the four townhouses.

“This was an experiment and it was a very noble experiment, and it was a success from this standpoint,” Freer said. “And what we did was learn a lot about the urban experience with Habitat for Humanity.”