Habitat for Humanity
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
I was sitting in an American airport lounge in 1986, casually reading some American magazines. On a previous flight I had been writing in my diary some problems I faced in Australia, wondering how I could answer them. One problem read: “Try to find a better way for providing housing for the homeless. Sydney has so many homeless people. When Wesley Mission builds accommodation for the people who are homeless, they do not look after it. Too many of the homeless people we put into our Wesley Mission properties show no interest in keeping the gardens neat, mark the walls, spill stuff over the carpet and let it get trampled around, and generally turn a first rate accommodation place into a pigs sty within a few months. How do we get homeless people to really value the property in which they live?
I had written down some comments after this: “The reason why most people look after their own property is that they own it. Either they own it or the bank does, in which case they are paying off a large percentage of their salary every week to pay the bank. Because they have pride of ownership, they take pride in keeping their property in good order.
“Homeless people often have a chip on their shoulder and they take it out against the property in which they stay. Look at all those people in Edward Eagar Lodge who have smashed furniture, tipped paint over when the workmen have left and that girl at Cottee Lodge who smashed every pane of glass with her fist.
“How could I get a good accommodation for homeless people and yet have them respect it?”
I also had written a note about many people whom I had gotten into Department of Housing properties. The note read: “And how can I get people to live in the units that I have organised for them through the Department of Housing to keep them clean and tidy? Because it is the Department of Housing, many of the people make a shambles of them, which reflects badly upon my recommendation. I am not happy recommending people who are going to trash a Government owned house. Where can I find an answer to this problem?”
Sitting in the airport lounge glancing through the magazines, I came upon a story of an organization called Habitat For Humanity. Here was a program that built houses for the homeless families. The family had to scrape together a small deposit, but then had to spend at least 500 hours working on the project before they would be accepted as a future owner. Because such poor people cannot afford hight interest rates, they were given the chance to pay off their loan at the affordable rate without any interest being charged. Money that was repaid went to help other families. Because the family had their only chance at owning their own property, they looked after it, and what was more, over 99.9% repaid without default.
In an instant in that airport lounge I had the answer to the problems that troubled me.
I contacted Habitat For Humanity in Georgia, American, and invited the founder, Millard Fuller and his wife Linda to Australia. I established a committee which included my wife Beverley because she was so committed to finding low cost housing for homeless families, and also a number of other Wesley Mission staff members. They proved to be a Godsend.
For the next ten years I was Chairman of the Australian Habitat For Humanity board, founded affiliates in different parts of Australia, and helped the first dozen houses to be built for poor families.
According to recent United Nations Statistics there are more than 100 million people throughout the world who don’t have anywhere to live.
When I think of a statistic like that, my thoughts immediately turn to countries like famine-ridden Ethiopia, war-torn Uganda, Afghanistan or Nicaragua, poverty-stricken India or Bangladesh. But we don’t have to look far to realise that there is a critical problem closer to home.
The problem of homelessness in Australia is increasing at an alarming rate in these tough economic times. People in all age groups in all communities in both city and county across Australia are affected.
At any moment in Sydney there are 5,000 people homeless. Some of them sleep in doorways, back alleys, trains or derelict buildings. The more fortunate sleep in hostels in the city. Hostels such as those run by Wesley Mission, the Salvation Army and St Vincent De Paul in Darlinghurst care for over 1,000 homeless men and women every night of the year.
In Chatswood or Parramatta, there are a number of people every night who do not have place to sleep, who do not have a place they call home. Like a young boy found sleeping in a Chatswood clothing collection bin.
One of the great concerns for those who work amongst the homeless is the changing profile of homeless people. Traditionally the homeless person on skid row was an aged man who was an alcoholic. Today there are numbers of people on skid row who do not have a drug or alcohol problem. Their problems include discharge from a psychiatric hospital, rental accommodation beyond their means, family disputes, and even victims of AIDS.
An increasing number of families are becoming homeless. Women, abused wives and children; young people who have lost direction and family support and just dropped out of the mainstream of life. Others face eviction as rental prices rise and the housing crisis escalates.
There are many families in Sydney in desperate straits trying to repay housing loans. Some of them will fail and end up on the streets. The numbers of homeless persons are increasing together with the needs for emergency accommodation.
Think what it would mean to be one of the thousands of Australians facing another cold night outside. Living below the poverty line and being disadvantaged lead to a circle of despair and helplessness that is hard to break.
How should we respond to the plight of the homeless? The problems are very complex—as complex as the reasons that cause people to become trapped in the circle of poverty and helplessness.
Look at what one man has done! Millard Fuller was a millionaire before reaching the age of thirty. With Linda, his wife, he had everything money could buy, except happiness. In the process of his pursuit of life in the fast lane, his marriage fell apart. Faced with a crisis, he decided to dramatically change his life’s direction. He gave away over $ 1 million to help the poor, undertook theological training and with his wife went to Zaire, Africa.
There they discovered the plight of the homeless and helped in building scores of homes. On his return to America he saw the plight of the homeless there and founded Habitat For Humanity—an ecumenical housing ministry whose objective is to eliminate poverty housing from the world and to make decent shelter available to all.
Their vision? —that one day there will be no more shacks, no derelict apartment houses, no homeless people sleeping on city streets. After 27 years there are over 200 affiliated projects in American and Canadian cities and over 40 sponsored projects in 18 developing countries, including India, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Uganda. Habitat for Humanity came to Australia in 1988 as group of 12 prominent business and community leaders joined together to form Habitat for Humanity Australia, sponsored by Wesley Mission. Today the work is no longer sponsored by Wesley Mission but is run by affiliates in 13 areas of Australia.
Houses are built or renovated using as much volunteer labour and donated materials as possible. Then they are sold to a needy family, who would be too poor or not able to secure a normal bank loan, at no profit and no interest. Small regular repayments are made over a fixed time period, with this funding then being recycled to build more homes.
Potential homeowners are required to give “sweat equity” to participate in the construction of their own home and help other prospective homeowners build their homes. This makes housing affordable for those who never thought they could actually own their own home.
For every home built in a western country, the aim is to build a home in a developing country, with currently four houses being built every day under this scheme.
Home is an important place for all of us—the very basis of our society. Everyone needs somewhere they can call home. But there are many people in Australia, in Sydney, who don’t have a decent place to live, who don’t know where they will sleep tonight.
There are people and organizations out there trying to do something constructive to change this situation, to give back decency and hope and shelter to those who have lost out in life, but they need our help today—tomorrow may be too late.
There is nothing more rewarding as seeing the “economics of Jesus” in action. The phrase was coined by the American millionaire Millard Fuller. His vision led to the formation of the Habitat For Humanity program.
The Lavelles were the first Australian family to be selected by the Australian Board of Habitat as recipients of a house in the first Sydney project. We arrived at the caravan park unannounced. I had rung the day before to see if it was alright to visit, but when they told me they were going to ring on pay day, when they could afford the 30 cents to call, I realised how thoughtless I had been.
Michael and Lauren, with Nikita three, Alia two, and Daniel one had been living in the caravan park since the previous November. They heard about the Habitat program through the Blacktown Council’s Social Worker who visits the park regularly. They applied, not really expecting to be accepted. “I’ve been let down too often before,” said Michael. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”
The Lavelles had been on the Housing Commission waiting list for three years. “When we first went on the list, they said there was a three year wait. Now that time is almost up, there is still a three-year wait. That’s why we thought we’d apply for the Habitat program, we had nothing to lose.”
I asked Michael whether he had ever thought of applying for a housing loan to try and get their own place. He replied, “I spent some time in the Army—I joined when I left school—and I got into trouble with some credit I had then. Since then I haven’t been able to get any credit at all, so I don’t bother anymore. I was in the Army at Townsville, but a knee injury I’d had since I was twelve kept playing up, so they gave me a medical discharge. I went back to school for a year to try and get into university, but with the weather up in Townsville, I just couldn’t study. We lived with my mother for a while but she remarried and my stepfather kicked us out. That was when we shifted down here. One good thing was that the Housing Commission paid our bond money on the caravan—we couldn’t have got it otherwise”.
Michael worked as a driver for a local company. “My pay is about the same as what I would get on the dole, but I ‘d rather work. After we pay the rent, about $150 a week, then buy food—there’s not a lot left. With the Habitat program, we’ll only pay$75 a week in repayments on the loan, there’s no interest to pay and we’ll be able to save.”
With no car, there are no outings for the family or trips to the beach or the park. “I can’t even let the kids play in the playground here at the park,” said Lauren. “It is right down the front, near the main road, and with the rain we’ve been having, the ground is soaking. The thing I am looking forward to the most is having our own front yard, with a fence and being able to save some money. At last we’ll have a place we can call home.”
One of the conditions of the Habitat program is that families selected have to put in 500 hours of “sweat equity” into the building of their home. “No problem with that”, said Michael. “I will work out on the site on Saturday and Sunday.”
The house built for the Lavelles was built on land donated to the Habitat program at Plumpton. Plans were drawn up to build five townhouses on the site using volunteer labour.
Each townhouse had three bedrooms and were fully self-contained. Four other families were chosen in subsequent months to occupy the other unites on the block.
The Rotary Club of Sydney made the building of these houses their community service project of 1989 and offered practical support in the years following.
The then Director of Habitat For Humanity in Australia, Ted Swisher, said of the project, “We have had two architects donate their services together with a structural engineer. But we always need companies to donate building materials and increased fundraising efforts.”
Today since our early beginnings, we have established 13 regional offices and groups to raise funds for Habitat, and throughout Australia have built and occupied 34 houses. Starting from the original house in Plumpton, we have now built 19 houses in Western Sydney with another 3 in Quirindi and 2 in Macarthur.
Last year the 100,000th house was opened and dedicated, and today more than 500,00 formerly homeless people, or else people who lived in garages and shacks, now own their own home. This year, under the leadership of former US President Jimmy Carter, an international month of house building will be held in Durbin, South Africa. 1,500 volunteer builders will come and in that time, build 1,000 houses. In the first four days of June, 100 houses will be completed.
Habitat For Humanity International is a non-profit ecumenical Christian housing ministry. Its aim is to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter for people a matter of conscience and action in every nation. It has succeeded in getting people from all backgrounds, races and religions to works together to provide safe, decent and affordable housing.
Through volunteer labour and donations of money and materials, Habitat builds and rehabilitates simple, decent houses with the help of the homeowner families who will live in them. They are sold to those families at no profit and financed with affordable, no interest loans. Their monthly mortgage repayments are used to build still more Habitat houses.
Habitat For Humanity is not a charitable program. Because in addition to a down payment and monthly mortgage payments, homeowners invest hundreds of hours in their own labour, what we call “sweat equity,” in building their own Habitat house and houses for other people.
Every local Habitat affiliate, that is a local group of people dedicated to building houses for the poor, given ten per cent of their contributions to fund house building in other nations. From Australia and New Zealand, for example, 1/10 of all the money we have raised has gone to build several hundred houses in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. More than 100 houses have been built in those areas because of the tithing of the income of people here in Australia.
Habitat For Humanity Australia needs practical workers; people to help raise funds and others who will help us finish off houses that future homeowners have started. You can look up the Habitat For Humanity website and click on Australia to find out your nearest area where you can volunteer.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.