Our community is facing an affordable housing crisis.
Our neighbors are in need
Our program helps families become self-sufficient and constructive members of the community.
Our community needs restoring
39.9% of families in our area are cost burdened and living below 50% of the area median family income.
Our crisis is a global issue
In the U.S. alone, 95 million people have housing problems. Globally, about 1.6 billion have substandard housing.
We are the front runner in the solution – but we can’t do it alone.
Building up families
Clean, decent, and stable housing provides more than just a roof over someone’s head. It provides stability for families and children, and a sense of dignity and pride.
Restoring our community
The percentage of people without access to decent, stable housing is rapidly rising. If we are to succeed in the fight against poverty, we must support the expansion of housing both as policy and as practice.
More than just a roof over someone’s head
Clean, decent, and stable housing provides stability for families and children; a sense of dignity and pride, healthy, physical safety, and security, and even an increase of educational and job prospects.
The transformational power of good housing
Clean, warm housing is essential for prevention and care of the diseases of poverty like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diarrhea, and malaria. For example, children under five in Malawi living in Habitat for Humanity houses have 44 percent less malaria, respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases compared to children living in traditional houses.
Home ownership is a means of wealth creation
Home ownership is a form of wealth accumulation through equity and forced savings from mortgage repayment. And the process of securing land tenure helps to increase access to credit. Additionally, housing construction creates job opportunities for migrants to cities and stimulates the creation of small business.
Affordable housing increases economic investment and development
Home ownership contributes to thriving school systems and community organizations, and acts as catalyst for civic activism and a stimulus for community-based organizations. Safe homes and neighborhoods help to build social stability and security.
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We help provide the stability and security needed for families to move from substandard living conditions to safe, sturdy, energy efficient, affordable homes.
Ashley Finister’s Family
“The Habitat program a dream come true for me and my son as we will finally be able to live comfortably in a brand new house that we help to build.”
A shley Finister is a Galveston county native and a mother to her 3 year old son Everton. Ashley learned about Habitat from her older sister, Ruby, who just recently purchased her new home through Habitat this past year. Ashley says she was “at a loss for words” when she was told she was accepted into the Habitat program.
Her surprise and gratefulness is evident in her first meeting at Habitat for Humanity as she seems in awe of the opportunity to own her own home. Ashley currently lives in a one bedroom apartment in Houston where she shares a room with her son. The complex is not a safe haven for children as there is consistent foot and car traffic outside her front door that would put Everton in harm’s way.
As a result, she explains that her son rides his bike in circles in the family room when he needs to get his toddler energy out. Ashley considers the Habitat program a dream come true for her and her son as they will finally be able to live comfortably in a brand new house that she helps to build.
170
Families
Served
Since Bay Area Habitat for Humanity
was founded in 1991