Habitat for Humanity

For 25 years, local Habitat for Humanity affiliates in the Bay Area have engaged volunteers to build hundreds of homes sold at affordable prices to qualified working low-income families. Since 2008, Habitat has also acquired and rehabilitated vacant, blighted and foreclosed homes throughout the Bay Area, creating opportunity in hard-hit communities. Last week, the California Supreme Court ended redevelopment agencies and along with them, the 20 percent tax increment set aside for affordable housing. This decision is devastating for all affordable housing providers in California, including Habitat for Humanity, as it eliminated a critical source of funding along with the skilled government partners who facilitate the construction of apartments, shelters and homes.

Safe and affordable housing – a secure roof over one’s head – is a basic, essential human need. Without an alternative funding source to redevelopment agencies, building new affordable housing will become nearly impossible in the Bay Area. These losses are not just dollars, but lost opportunities for families like Dina Abarca, who lives in a Habitat home in East Menlo Park.

Abarca is a working single mother and the sole support of her two kids. Abarca is employed as a store manager at a local convenience mart. Before Abarca became a Habitat homeowner, they lived in a four- bedroom home with 11 others. Abarca and her children rented a room and shared the kitchen and bathroom with the other renters. The family’s life was confined to one small room. Studying for the kids was difficult as was sleep because renters were coming and going at all hours. Privacy was nonexistent and overcrowding led to unhealthy living conditions. As a Habitat homeowner, Abarca helped renovate her new home (previously a foreclosure) with community volunteers.

Owning a home was central to Abarca’s vision for her family. Once established in her new home, the children quickly improved their grades. The whole family has more energy because they can sleep through the night. Only through Habitat’s program could Abarca afford to buy her own home. In a nation increasingly consisting of the haves and have-nots, families like Abarca’s succeed with a modest investment that creates a virtuous cycle for our community and economy.

Habitat’s program allows families to live close to work, create a better future and ultimately break the cycle of poverty. The effects of Habitat’s program reach beyond our homeowners to the neighborhoods where neighbors experience a renewed sense of stability and community pride. Habitat homeowners strengthen the social and financial fabric of our communities through lower neighborhood crime rates, higher property values and a secure workforce.

Throughout California, nearly 100,000 units of affordable housing have been developed through redevelopment agencies since 1993. These funds were an effective investment, providing first-in funding that we could leverage to secure more private donations to build homes and revitalize communities, often communities devastated by the foreclosure crisis. Approximately 36 percent of every new construction unit that Habitat completes comes from redevelopment funds. Providing safe, decent and affordable homeownership to low income working families is the mission of Habitat for Humanity. The court’s ruling puts this mission at risk.

Yet Habitat is optimistic that this decision presents an opportunity for Gov. Jerry Brown and housing leaders to immediately explore all resources as a permanent source of funding, reforms to decrease the costs for construction, and creative incentives for sustainable building of affordable housing. We pray this can be tackled in a timely fashion and before affordable home-builders close their doors as a result of unrecoverable losses in funding. The need for affordable housing in California has never been as critical as it is right now. With thousands of people in the nine-county Bay Area who financially qualify for Habitat homes, our work cannot stop. We must find a way to ensure that all California residents have a safe and healthy home in which to raise their families.

Bay Area Habitat for Humanity projects in jeopardy

In process

– 22 homes, Oakland, 84th and 81st avenues

– 9 homes, Bay Point, El Rincon Road

– 36-unit condominiums, Daly City, Mission Street

– 10 homes, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Creek Homes

– 12 homes, Oakland, Brookfield Court

Future

– 60 homes, Concord, Concord Naval Weapons Station

– 30-unit residence, San Francisco, Whitney Young Circle

– 32 homes, Alameda, North Housing

– 24-unit residence, Brisbane

– 22 homes, Bay Point, Pacifica Street

– 20 homes, Fremont, Central Avenue

– 14-unit residence, Redwood City, El Camino Real

– 10 foreclosure renovations, Oakland

– 10 homes, Hayward, A Street

– 8 homes, Oakland, Byron Avenue

– 7 homes, Santa Clara, De La Cruz Boulevard

Source: Habitat for Humanity/East Bay

Janice Jensen and Phillip Kilbridge are leaders of the East Bay and Greater San Francisco affiliates of Habitat for Humanity.

This article appeared on page A – 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/02/EDUB1MJ7A3.DTL#ixzz1iWDOY6PD

This week the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal published a 12 page supplement  in their normal publication about Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley. The supplement was a joint effort by the Business Journal and Focus Business Bank  to bring funding and awareness about the need for affordable housing in the Silicon Valley and the solution Habitat Silicon Valley offers.

Habitat Silicon Valley is extremely thankful for this wonderful gift and hope this piece helps encourage more people to get involved.

Click here to check out the 12-page supplement!

Five south county Master Gardeners trained and mentored 20 Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley volunteers and new homeowners at the latest six-home Habitat site in Morgan Hill. Under the Master Gardeners’ supervision, the able Habitat volunteer group successfully planted 278 trees and shrubs June 29th and installed drippers and mulch over the site on June 30th. This Master Gardener group will hold an on-site Landscape Care Training for the new homeowners July 9. The home owners will attend two more Master Gardener taught classes as part of their gardening education required by the Habitat organization. The classes will be held at the Morgan Hill Community Garden August 20 and September 11 and are open to the public.

Thank you Master Gardeners!

That was the theme of our 2011 Habitat for Humanity Conference in Atlanta, GA in Spring.  It’s a question I ask myself everyday in my role as Director of Housing Development for Habitat Silicon Valley. And it’s a question I’d like you to ask yourself? 

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re interested in the idea of helping to build a Habitat home for a deserving family in the Silicon Valley.  What will you be building?……..a shelter,  a dream,  hope,  relationships,  skills you never realized you had.  Habitat does more than build houses: it builds families,  neighborhoods, and communities by bringing people together in a spirit of friendship and teamwork.

We can’t do it without you!  Together we can build, repair and renovate simple, decent houses with and for God’s people in need, doing  so using  biblical economics: no profit and no interest; taking the limited resources available, asking God to bless them, then going to work to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness.  It’s the Theology of The Hammer.

Will you build HOPE with us?  Come hit the nail on the head – literally, and repeatedly – until the homes are  built and the deserving families move in.

Chris Weaver—Director of Housing Development

As April comes to a close, Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley celebrates the success of our first Nickels for Nails drive. This month long fundraiser took began in March and wrapped up this April. We want to begin by thanking all of our participating schools without whom this drive would have been impossible.

Leland High School

Gilroy Early College Academy

HFH Club of Cupertino

First Presbyterian Church of Los Altos Youth Group

HFH Club of Los Altos

Reaching out into our community, nine schools signed up to take part in the spring coin drive. The participants raised funds as well as awareness among fellow students for poverty housing by collecting change. The month long coin drive was an effort by HFHSV to engage and reach out to the younger population of Santa Clara County.

Success seen by the fundraiser is due in large part to the student representatives that are amazingly supportive advocates of HFHSV in their schools and Habitat campus clubs. A bright future is clear with the active, committed youth in the Silicon Valley. They are determined to make a difference in their own communities.

Thanks again to all our participants and all those who took part in the fundraiser!

Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley celebrates Earth Day 2011. Homes that Habitat builds in the Silicon Valley implement both green products and green technology. By using green technology HFHSV strives to decrease our carbon footprint and better our planet one home at a time.

HFHSV is seeking GreenPoint Rating (www.builditgreen.org) or our current build in Morgan Hill on Cory Drive.  A GreenPoint Rated home is graded on five categories: Energy Efficiency, Resource Conservation, Indoor Air Quality, Water Conservation and Community. 

Usage of green technology is also implemented whenever possible on the homes to save our planet as well as lessen the energy burden bill on Habitat homeowners. A few products used in our homes are on-demand water heaters, solar panels, wall sheathing (OSB), and fluorescent fixtures and bulbs.

Our homes are built using Optimal Value framing (24″ on center). This process enables HFHSV to eliminate 30% of the framing material typically used on a project of this size.

By using green products as well as green building techniques HFHSV aims to make every day on our job site Earth Day. Conservation and reduction are important to Habitat and we seek to build sustainable homes for both our families as well as our environment.

Join us onsite and see our green products at work! To volunteer contact Sarah Towey at STowey@hfhsv.org.

For more information on the green materials or techniques at HFHSV visit our website www.habitatsiliconvalley.org.

It’s so wonderful to get the chance to work with corporations, like Cisco, here in the Silicon Valley that are willing to give back to their community by donating funds, time, resources and energy to help out organizations like ours!!

Sarah Towey, Volunteer Coordinator