Affordable Housing

By Kevin Campbell, Former President/CEO of Habitat Wake, and Kia Baker, Habitat Wake Board Member and Executive Director of Southeast Raleigh Promise. 

What’s the largest investment you’ve ever made? For most Americans, it’s their home. That’s one of the reasons Habitat for Humanity believes so strongly in homeownership. It can be a powerful tool for building wealth, which helps families climb the rungs of the economic ladder.

Low-income families are paying the price of the government shutdown as housing support falters and workers go without paychecks

Race is more than a category assigned to a person based on physical or social traits. Race is a manufactured idea that deliberately limits people of color.

This is not a revolutionary statement, but it is good to be reminded often, and that’s what Habitat Wake’s leadership and board hoped to do by attending Alexa Broderick’s Equity Paradigm workshop last week.

Defining whiteness

There are many rules of thumb, and the FHFA has new suggestions for making those more accurate.

During a weather emergency, where you live and the condition of your home is critical.

Even though it quickly downgraded, Hurricane Florence has deeply affected the coasts of North and South Carolina and is hitting communities hard. Widespread flooding, debris, loss of power, and downed trees threatened homes, livelihood, and well being.

Check out this recent New York Times article around Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s proposals to drastically raise rents in federally subsidized housing.  Dr. Carson’s premise is that subsidized housing just promotes families staying in that housing for a lifetime and provides some sort of disincentive for work.  I think analysis will show that it is a much more complicated situation than solely that.

On Wednesday, Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies (JCHS) released its annual report on the State of the Nation’s Housing. Each year, the report gives an update on key trends in housing across the country and in select metropolitan areas.

The staff at the North Carolina Housing Coalition (www.nchousing.org) have put together data on the need for affordable housing in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties.  The two counties we serve—Wake and Johnston show a need of 106,126 and 19,121 families cost burdened for housing in each county, respectively.  That’s 29% of all families in Wake and 31% in Johnston.

Check out this excellent resource here:

https://nchousing.org/county-fact-sheets/

We are pleased to share an opportunity for Habitat homeowners and supporters to learn more about our local bus system!