A Solid Foundation : Habitat for Humanity Marks 10 Years of Building Homes for O.C.’s Needy
It is 10 years since Habitat for Humanity began building affordable homes in Orange County for the working poor. And what does the nonprofit have to show for its time?
Meet Michelle Ewing.
“I’ve been praying for my own home ever since my husband left me with two kids to bring up,” the disabled sign language interpreter said, sitting in the garage of the answer to her prayers--a three-bedroom duplex in Irvine.
“I want to be here the rest of my life. I’m not gonna leave,” Ewing said at a party Habitat gave Sunday to mark its 10th anniversary in the county. “I want a place to call home and have Christmas--Christmas in my own home.”
Ewing is one of the lucky ones. Sixty-three lucky ones, to be exact. That’s how many families in the county have gotten low-cost homes through the international organization since it founded a chapter here in 1988. More than 2,000 others have been turned away.
Set against the affordable housing crisis in the county, one of the most acute in the nation, Habitat’s largess doesn’t look like much of an accomplishment.
But, say the more than 300 volunteers of the Habitat chapter that began with a handful, it all depends on what you choose to see.
“I’m not going to say we’re making a dent overall, but we are making a difference to the families that we have selected, and we’re also making the issue more visible,” said Michael Bryant, a spokesman for the chapter.
“We’re not building palaces, and we’re not solving all the problems here. But we’re building decent, affordable homes for people who want and deserve them.”
Habitat builds simple homes around the world using donations and volunteer labor.
In Orange County, as elsewhere, Habitat volunteer architects design the homes, volunteer landscapers design the gardens, volunteer plumbers and electricians install the piping and electrical systems.
Low-income families get the homes by meeting certain criteria--they must make enough to afford the no-interest mortgages Habitat arranges but not enough that they could afford a house on their own.
In Orange County, it means earning about $16,000 to $20,000 a year. The mortgage payments go back into a revolving account that Habitat draws on to build more homes.
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But building decent, affordable homes for low-income people in Orange County is no mean feat.
First there is the scope of the need.
According to a study released this month by the Washington D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the nation’s widest gap in affordable housing is in Los Angeles County and two northern Orange County cities--Santa Ana and Anaheim.
In those areas, there are four times more low-income renters than there are low-cost units. The gap is twice the national average of 2 to 1.
Los Angeles County and the Santa Ana-Anaheim metropolitan area also have the largest proportion of low-income tenants living in overcrowded conditions and are among urban areas with the lowest proportion of poor residents receiving government housing aid, the study found.
And for those trying to meet the need, even a group as well-established and respected as Habitat for Humanity, known as the favorite charity of former President Jimmy Carter, Orange County presents obstacles.
Land is pricey in the county, and it takes serious finagling to get donated sites, such as the small plot the Irvine Co. gave Habitat for Ewing’s home and 13 others.
Design standards are tricky. Homes built in Irvine, for example, are required to have pricey add-ons such as two-car garages and tile roofs, which not only are more expensive than the composite roofs that Habitat volunteers put on most of the houses they build around the world, but also are so dangerous to install that the organization has to hire a roofer.
“The last thing we need is some volunteer falling off,” Bryant said.
Property taxes, too, are higher in Orange County developments than in many other parts of the country, regardless of the size of the house, Bryant said.
When you add it all up, “they say that if you can build a Habitat house in Orange County, you can build them anywhere in the United States,” said Joan Ziegler, a Habitat volunteer.
Which explains why the organization was celebrating Sunday with a cookout and a band and speeches in front of the soon-to-be-finished Irvine homes.
“When you see how you transform a life when people get a house--their children’s grades improve, they can go back to school themselves . . .--it’s wonderful,” said Ziegler, who started volunteering with the group a year ago, having never done construction work before.
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For Ewing, Sunday was a time to run from one friend made through the organization to another, ignoring the back brace she wears after four surgeries to correct a congenitally weak spine to hug and kiss and exclaim about her good fortune. In about a month, she and her two teenage daughters will move out of the two-room rented apartment that backs onto a freeway that they have squeezed into for years. Waiting for them will be the home on which Ewing made a 1% down payment--a little duplex with one bathtub and no air conditioning.
“It’s a dream come true. It’s a total miracle,” Ewing said. “The things that I’ve been through, I look back and I see God hasn’t let me down. He just made me wait.”
