Habitat Wake Happenings

The finishing touches are complete to the retail showroom and donation facility for the newest ReStore operated by Habitat for Humanity of Wake County. The new Glenwood Avenue location in west Raleigh opened in December, making it the sixth ReStore location in Wake County, joining locations in Raleigh, Apex, Cary, Fuquay-Varina, and Wake Forest.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted a blog entry and, well, that’s because we’ve just plain been busy!

We built an entire house on site at and during the NC State Fair.  Thanks to many North Carolina building products companies and the NC Departments of Commerce, Health & Human Services and Agriculture.

We made presentations at Habitat’s state conference at Lake Junaluska in Haywood County.

We attended the NC Affordable Housing Conference in Raleigh.

We sold six homes to some amazing partner families.  They were excited!

BUILDER Magazine just released its annual rankings of homebuilders in the United States for 2015 and we are pleased to share that Habitat for Humanity ranked as the #1 private (non-publicly traded) homebuilding organization with 3,237 homes built!

Forty-two of those homes were built in Wake County and we thank everyone for the part you played in making it possible. It is a great testimony in our country that those on the margins of the market are cared about in such a major way by making homeownership possible through the Habitat model.

On this Martin Luther King holiday, I recalled that, recently, at my church our pastor shared the thought that proximity destroys prejudice.  Think about it—if you spend time next to someone getting to really know them—you can’t help but respond in a more open and loving way.  Habitat build sites are great places for proximity.  We pride ourselves on our mission of “bringing people together” to build homes, communities, and hope.

 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

Gospel of John 15:5-8

Last Saturday, I found myself sandwiched between a 12-year old Michael Jackson wannabe and the southern hip-hop group, Nappy Roots, on stage at NC State's back-to-school celebration, Packapalooza.

Since 1985, Habitat Wake has built 500 new homes.  We are dedicating 7 more this week.  Yet, 28,000 Wake County families remain in need of affordable housing.

I saw Darrell Daigre, co-owner of Savvy Homes, on our Builders Blitz site this week.  I thanked Darrell for his company’s generous partnership in donating a new home to Habitat Wake in each of the last four years—a gift of at least $200,000!   Darrell responded enthusiastically saying, “We’re just getting started!”

Last month at Habitat for Humanity’s national conference in Atlanta, Habitat Wake founder and current VP of Program Ministries, Rick Beech, led one of the day with some devotional thoughts.  Rick reflected on the very early days of Habitat Wake, the organization that he helped found in 1985 while a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest. At that time, Habitat was a relatively unknown organization and there was a strong sense of relying on God to provide the resources needed to meet the serious housing needs of many Wake County residents who were literally living