Wasted Opportunity
Wasted Opportunity
Last week, Gov. Tim Kaine announced he was giving $17.5 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Funding to localities to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed homes so that they can be restored to a more functional life. This announcement followed a similar $7 million grant in April.
Fauquier County is preparing an application for a subsequent round of stabilization funding, hoping to get as much as $2 million to bolster some neighborhoods that are having problems facing our current economic challenges.
A pretty good chunk of last week's money went to Habitat for Humanity of Virginia, and, frankly, the $1.5 million gift has us scratching our heads.
Habitat for Humanity's business model is widely misunderstood, despite the organization's repeated assertion that what it offers is a hand up, not a handout.
It is not a charity; the organization sells its houses — and all the donations of materials that have gone into them — to its partner families. Nothing is given away.
The home-building ministry sells them at zero interest, to be sure, but the business model means that Habitat keeps, either as actual cash on hand or as incoming monthly mortgage payments, the lion's share of all the money it has ever raised, excepting only that which has gone to expenses and overhead.
Any quarrel we have with the governor's grant is unrelated to the local chapter, which has done nothing but good in and for Fauquier County.
On a global scale, however — and, we suspect, even on the statewide scale, which is the point here — there is a whole different dynamic at work.
Worldwide, Habitat for Humanity International raises about $1 billion a year in donations. Just a matter of a few weeks ago, one well-heeled member of the board of directors of Habitat for Humanity International gave the organization a $100 million gift. In non-profit circles, Habitat is considered a fundraising juggernaut, and with good reason.
Granting that it uses the vast majority of the money it solicits to forward its mission, Habitat International doesn't really spend money to build houses. Excepting overhead, almost every dollar that goes out eventually returns to the Americus, Ga., headquarters.
Habitat doesn't spend money; it recycles money.
The point is, Habitat for Humanity International is already flush with cash, and Habitat for Humanity Virginia is likely pretty self-sufficient, too; does it really need a $1.5 million infusion of federal money that would be better spent elsewhere?
Better spent elsewhere because everything the federal government does with our tax dollars these days, including Neighborhood Stabilization Funding, should have an economic stimulus component.
In our estimation, that means that the portion of this $1.5 million that can be spent on refurbishing purchased homes should be spent, as much as possible, in a way that creates or preserves jobs. Creating and preserving jobs are the respective heart and soul of economic stimulation.
Besides its relatively few paid staffers, Habitat is an organization that employs volunteers, and employs is decidedly the wrong word in this context.
Frankly, we cannot identify the stimulative effect to the Virginia economy from putting more volunteers to work.
A major home builder headquartered in Richmond declared bankruptcy last week. Local contractors and remodelers continue to struggle in an economic niche that remains depressed.
An increasing number of Habitat critics claim that the organization has become more interested in providing feel-good opportunities for volunteers — read: donors — and raising ever-increasing sums of money, and that it has grown less concerned about putting deserving low-income families under a roof.
While that debate continues, this one should be settled: There are better ways to use taxpayer money than handing it over to an organization that doesn't need it and won't help the general economy when it gets it.