Habitat gears up for duplex project
By Kelly Alm
Fauquier Habitat for Humanity recently chose 14 partner families with whom the Christian ministry will build its trademark "decent, affordable housing" over the next four years.The families are earmarked to move into Sterling Court Community, a 2.9-acre site off Academy Hill Road in Warrenton, which will accommodate seven duplexes with two three-bedroom units.
The duplexes are designed to look and feel like single-family homes, offering families privacy by providing separate entrances on opposite sides of the building and trees for boundary screening.
Work on the infrastructure will begin in March and construction on the homes is slated to get underway by July. The last duplex is expected to be complete by 2012.
Since the local chapter was founded in 1993, it has built 37 homes, and rehabilitated three others.
The organization relies on volunteers to build the houses, and depends on donors to provide services and materials, including a handful of national partners. Whirlpool, for example, provides every Habitat home with a range and refrigerator, an annual $10 million commitment.
Habitat representatives are keen on pointing out that the organization offers a hand up, not a handout. In addition to repaying the cost of their home through a no-interest mortgage, each partner family must also contribute 400 hours of “sweat equity” in building the home.
However, many Habitat affiliates have struggled in recent years with housing costs that have skyrocketed, while wages, especially those on the lower end of the spectrum, have been stagnant.
Homes, even those built with volunteer labor and donated materials, have simply gotten too expensive for low-wage earners to afford.
This has meant that Habitat affiliates around the country are finding themselves increasingly building with families that are somewhat higher up the economic ladder; they are the only ones who can afford the completed home, even if there is no interest on the note.
“Our goal is still to get rid of poverty housing,” said Jack Flikeid, executive director of the local affiliate. Poverty housing included housing that has severe structural problems, lacks indoor plumbing and/or electricity, is overcrowded or otherwise puts the health of its occupants at risk.
“We still have 400 families living in poverty housing in Fauquier," Flikeid said.
However, continuing to serve the county's neediest comes at a cost not originally incorporated into Habitat's model.
Habitat for Humanity International guidelines are for all costs to be included in the price paid by the home buyer — a hand up, not a handout.
As land value has risen, however, subsidizing part or all of the cost of land has become increasingly necessary and routine.
“If a piece of land costs $100,000, we can’t put that on top of the cost of housing,” Flikeid said. “We have the latitude to subsidize part of the cost, so families can afford to pay the mortgage.”
Giving partner families the land enables Fauquier Habitat to continue working with people who make as little as 25 percent of the area's median income (and no more than 50 percent of that figure).
According to Census Bureau figures, the median income in Fauquier County was $70,652 (2004 figures).
Exclusive of land costs, Fauquier Habitat is able to build a house for $70,000 to $75,000, for an average no-interest monthly mortgage payment of about $350.
In other areas, Habitat affiliates help families who make as much as 80 percent of their area's median income.
“Some counties are more into providing affordable housing than eliminating poverty housing,” Flikeid said. "We have chosen to service them first because they are the most needy.”