Last month, the Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County Board of Directors approved a measure committing our affiliate to raising funds for the relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti. We are challenging the community to raise up to $10,000 for Haiti, which HFHNCC will then match from our own resources.
HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED: 1) Attend our Annual Dinner. Habitat's Annual Dinner "Building More than Houses...Building Communities" will be held on April 15, 2010 at Cavalier Country Club in Newark, Delaware. A portion of the proceeds from event tickets will go to benefit Haiti. To register, or for more information, see here: http://www.habitatncc.org/donate/special_event.php
2) Shop at our ReStore. 10% of all sales made during the month of April will benefit Habitat for Humanity's projects in Haiti.
3) Host a fundraiser. Organize members of your churches, your schools, and your communities to arrange an event that will raise funds for Haiti. Donations can be mailed or delivered to:
Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County's ReStore, the #1 source for new and gently used construction and household items in the community, needs to buy a box truck for increased donation pick-up. Products are picked up from a home or business and resold at a discount to the public. All sales proceeds go back into Habitat's homebuilding projects.
Please make a donation to help offset Habitat's purchase of a much needed truck for the ReStore, or please contact us if you can donate a used (less than 7 years old) box truck (17 feet or greater in length). Please visit http://www.habitatncc.org/ to make your secure online donation today!
With a single act of recyling, we are one step closer to giving another local family a simple, decent place to live. America Recycles Day (ARD) is November 15th and we are encouraging everyone to perform one simple act of kindess – recycle.
Ready to become more energy efficient? Fuel efficient? Then donate your old appliance and your old car. The Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County ReStore accepts gently used appliances and other household items, including furniture, that could’ve ended up in a landfill. The ReStore resells these items to the public at 50%-90% off of retail. Last year alone, proceeds from the ReStore helped build two more houses.
We also keep our homebuilding program alive with the help from our Cars for Homes program. Simply donate your unwanted vehicle keeps more cars out of the junkyard and more families in homes.
We urge you to tell your friends, neighbors and passersby to join millions of Americans pledging to increase their recycling habits at home and work and to buy products made with recycled materials. Use November 15th as a springboard for change to help build more homes by ReCyling with the ReStore and turning Cars into Homes.
Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County now has a Facebook fan page! Visit our profile at 'Habitat for Humanity - Wilmington, DE' and become a fan today!
Let's stand up on World Habitat Day and let it be known that affordable, adequate housing should be a priority everywhere—in our communities, in our towns, in our country, in our world.
The United Nations has designated the first Monday of each October as World Habitat Day. This year on October 5, in New Castle County, Delaware, and around the world, please join Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County in support of this global observance as we come together and declare that the lack of decent, affordable housing is unacceptable. According to the United Nations, more than 100 million people in the world today are homeless. Millions more face a severe housing problem living without adequate sanitation, with irregular or no electricity supply and without adequate security.
New Castle, DelawareCountyHousing Facts
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the 2007 ‘Fair Market Rent’ (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment in New CastleCounty is $923. The hourly wage needed to afford a FMR in NCC is $17.75, or $36,920 a year. Consider the case of a single mother, with two children, earning minimum wage ($6.15/hr in NCC). She would need to work 115 hours a week to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment.
In May 2007, the Delaware Housing Coalition reported only 36 % of Delawareans can afford the median home price of $228,000. Moreover, 26,000 households in DE are considered ‘severely burdened’ by cost of living; spending more than 50% of their total income on housing.
The number of children living in poverty conditions in NCC is astounding. According to data collected by the Delaware Housing Coalition’s 2005-2006 study “The Realities of Poverty,” over 10% of children in NCC ages 5-17 are living in poverty; or one in every 10 children.
How You Can Help
Raising awareness and advocating for change are the first steps toward transforming systems that perpetuate the global plague of poverty housing. World Habitat Day serves as an important reminder that everyone must unite to ensure that everyone has a safe, decent place to call home.
Please be a part of this crucial worldwide movement, and sign our World Habitat Day petition, by going to our website at www.habitatncc.org.
Additionally, to celebrate World Habitat Day, Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County, along with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Wilmington Field Office is hosting a groundbreaking ceremony at our newest Habitat development, GracePoint, in Middletown, where six new townhouses will be built starting in early 2010. Information for this event is listed below.
If you would like to attend our World Habitat Day Celebration, please R.S.V.P. by emailing bporterrockwell@habitatncc.org, or calling 302-652-0365 ext. 108 by Oct. 2.
Ok, we all know the joke that ends with DelaWhere? Yes, our tiny little state is the brunt of many jokes, although, I'm sure Rhode Island has a far worst time than us. I was reminded of this little rib tickler from the name of a friend's blog title. Yes, she named her blog DelaWhere? Since her blog is all about living here in Delaware, and bringing focus to the richness of simply being here, I, being employed by Habitat, can relate to that need to spread the gospel, so to speak. When people ask what I do, and I say I work for Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County, they automatically think, 'Oh you're the people that give homes to poor people.' I automatically groan and think cue the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition bulldozer and host Ty Pennington's megaphone. (Of course, that's assuming someone who's been living on Mars for most of their life doesn't say 'HabiWho?') Geez people...While like, Extreme Makeover, we are building homes and fulfilling the American Dream of homeownership, we are unlike them in that we do notgive away homes. Our homeowners don't get weeklong vacations to Disney in exchange for a new place to lay their head each night. They get 225 sweat equity hours. That means, for every volunteer who comes out on site, you're bound to be swinging your hammer right next to the future owner of that lot. But even before they go out on site, they get 18 hours of our Conerstone construction training -basic skills to prepare them for the worksite. And our homeowners themselves are the hospital nurses caring for you and your loved ones or the security guards ensuring your safety on a dark campus, for example. It's through this combination of sweat equity and zero interest mortgages that our prospective homeowners, after a near year-long committment, get to drop the 'prospective' tag and can finally say they partnered with Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County and they now own a home. And like the 'DelaWhere' jokes that undoubtedly will keep coming, HFHNCC will undoubtedly be there to surpass our current stock of 139 homes.
Recently, I was given a copy of the quarterly magazine from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Decades before Habitat for Humanity Founders Millard and Linda Fuller decided that building simple, decent affordable housing for local families in need should be a national phenomenon, there was Frank LLoyd Wright. The man was an architect, educator and most important, a proponent of affordable housing, well before the term 'affordable housing' really took hold of the public domain. According to the Wright Foundation's CEO Phil Allsopp, Wright penned this phrase in 1908: "Buildings are the background or framework for the human life." A key message Wright tried to get across in all that he did was that we need to be able to act in concert with changing times. Times like now when so many people are losing their jobs and facing the threat of losing their homes. Through all of this the lesson we've embraced includes looking for new and different ways to create quality and sustainable dwellings and, where necessary, restore existing structures. It's this last part that brings me back to what we do here at Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County. We like to think of ourselves as providers of those "background[s] or framework[s] for human life." We've done it here in NCC for more than 20 years and even in these uncertain economic times, we will continue with the Habitat mission to build affordable housing, modify some existing structures, and also, in some ways, maintain the vision of the pioneer of affordable housing. And so welcome to the Habitat Happenings blog. We look forward to engaging you in the mission to give hardworking, local families their shot at the American Dream of homeownership.
The mission of Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County is to build affordable housing at no-profit through a combination of volunteer labor, homeowner 'sweat-equity' and no-interest mortgages. We act in partnership with the community as a diverse group, including individuals, partner families, faith groups, civic organizations, local schools and businesses. We reach out from Christian roots across denominational, faith, economic and racial lines to bring together people who are concerned for their neighbors. We strive to develop and empower individuals and communities through the construction of simple, decent homes.
