DelaWhere? Habi-Who?

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 not give 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.

Wright Done Right

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.