Transcripts

BRENT WOLFE: A brand new house in the Twin Cities for $40,000 may seem impossible. But for nearly 15 years, Habitat for Humanity has made it possible. That's about what it costs habitat to build a home with donated land, labor, and materials. They sell the houses to low-income families with no interest payments. It's the basic formula set up by Habitat's founder 20 years ago in Georgia. Executive director of the Twin Cities chapter, Stephen Seidel, says, volunteer labor is the foundation of the organization.

STEPHEN SEIDEL: We have volunteers really doing about 80% of the work on a home. We do have paid subcontractors doing things like plumbing and the electrical work and the heating work and so forth. But most everything else is performed by volunteers.

[HAMMERING & POWER SAW]

CONNIE SIMPSON: Well we were kind of do-it-yourselfers at our house just for economic reasons. So we learned how to do a lot of things on our own.

BRENT WOLFE: Connie Simpson and fellow members of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Lakeland are working on a Habitat construction site in East St. Paul building four houses just over a small hill from Interstate 94. Simpson says, most of the work is fairly routine, like sweeping sawdust or shoveling gravel.

CONNIE SIMPSON: But I've never been on the roof before.

SPEAKER 1: Were you on the roof today?

CONNIE SIMPSON: Yes, I was.

SPEAKER 1: How was that?

CONNIE SIMPSON: Well, it was OK, except my hammer just kind of kept falling.

SPEAKER 1: Down to the ground, or?

CONNIE SIMPSON: It didn't injure anyone.

BRENT WOLFE: Volunteer [? Obi ?] [? Lillo ?] is a retired engineer.

SPEAKER 2: Today, in fact, is my one-year anniversary from retirement. And as I've kind of joked with maybe a couple of people here, it's kind of maybe working off the guilt for not having a real job anymore. But it's very satisfying, particularly having met some of the owners, the owners of the homes that are going in, and working closely with them.

BRENT WOLFE: Habitat requires prospective homeowners to work 300 to 500 hours on the construction of their house or other homes. Owners may sell a Habitat home, but the nonprofit gets the first opportunity to buy it back for another low-income family. Habitat officials estimate about 5% of their homeowners have sold their homes in the past 14 years.

Habitat isn't the only nonprofit building affordable housing in Minnesota. Joe Errigo is president of CommonBond Communities-- the largest affordable housing nonprofit group in the state. He says, the need for affordable housing is growing faster than both groups can handle as grants from the federal government decline. Errigo says, Habitat is the big name among affordable housing groups.

JOE ERRIGO: They have a public presence and name recognition that no one in this field has. And we all envy tremendously. They've had the very public leadership of people like Jimmy Carter that helped put them on the map, that helped promote a very good cause.

BRENT WOLFE: Habitat is able to leverage that name recognition into dollars. US Bank recently agreed to give Habitat chapters $1.5 million as part of a settlement with the attorney general's office over a consumer privacy case. And several companies recently matched membership pledges to Minnesota Public Radio with donations to the group.

Twin Cities Habitat executive director, Stephen Seidel, says, corporate support as well as government support and a high level of public interest have made the chapter one of the three most productive in the country. He believes Habitat houses are an ideal way to lift people out of poverty.

STEPHEN SEIDEL: Those homes become an economic base, an asset base for our families that enables us to do so many things-- to be able to borrow against them, to send kids to college, or to set aside kind of a nest egg for retirement or whatnot. It's a very important part of our purpose to create wealth among households that have very little wealth.

BRENT WOLFE: Shirley Winkle's three bedroom blue-gray house sits at the foot of one of Southeast Minnesota's river bluffs. Hers was the first house built by the Winona Habitat chapter. It's difficult for her to describe what the house means to her. But with some prompting, she reads an essay written by her granddaughter.

SHIRLEY WINKLE: We were closer yet to moving into the house, and I went over to Grandma on one of her alone visits in the evening to check on the house. I watched my gram walk through the house and touch the wall, a door, open the cupboards, and a tear fell down her face. And she said, our home. My children need never be on the street. Thank you, God. Sorry.

I then knew that this house was more than a house. It means more to Gram and more to us because we can really see Gram finally happy. We really know the peace and joy this Habitat house and the Habitat family brings to us.

BRENT WOLFE: Habitat officials say, they're going to pick up the pace of construction. While it's taken nearly 15 years to build the first 500 homes in Minnesota, they expect to complete the next 500 houses in three to four years. I'm Brent Wolfe, Minnesota Public Radio.