Note from Storm: This 2009 article announced Habitat For Humanity‘s strategic shift from building new homes to renovating existing homes. This was spurred by the 2008 real estate crash and mortgage crisis, which left hundreds of thousands of usable homes empty.
If you’re familiar with Habitat For Humanity’s current strategies, please update other readers in the Comments section below. Now that the worst of the crisis has passed, are they continuing to take advantage of opportunities to reuse existing houses, or have they reverted to their original focus on building new structures? Is their Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative still active? If so, how effective has it been?
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Habitat for Humanity International has been known for its mission to provide new homes for the poor ever since former President Carter, its most famous volunteer, grabbed work gloves and hammer in the 1980s to help build dwellings in struggling communities.
These days, Habitat is renovating the way it does business because of the mortgage meltdown, in which loose lending standards left thousands of foreclosed properties sitting vacant in the very neighborhoods the group aims to revitalize.
Habitat is increasingly acquiring foreclosures, renovating them and selling them to needy families, providing zero-interest loans when they don’t qualify for a mortgage.
Called the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, the program is Habitat’s attempt to address the national foreclosure crisis.