Agnes Penny, who recently retired from Cardinal Gibbons High School after 24 years of service, is responsible for cultivating thousands of teen-aged Habitat volunteers. As the school’s director of outreach, she connected students with opportunities to serve in the community. Every Cardinal Gibbons senior -- an average of 350 every year -- volunteers on Habitat Wake’s build site.

And after 24 years with the school, Penny exclaims, “That’s a lot of children!”  

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:

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

Gentrification is certainly a pressing topic in Wake County these days.  We like seeing investment in neighborhoods that have lacked investment for decades, but left uncontrolled, the market can quickly price out residents that have called the neighborhood home all their lives.  

Cross-posted from Habitat for Humanity International. Original post available at habitat.org.

Richard Rothstein, a leading expert on U.S. housing policy and author of The Color of Law explains the need for the Fair Housing Act, its context, and the consequences of barriers to equal and affordable housing.

I had just turned 10 in April 1968 and though not very aware of the world beyond my segregated suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood, I remember hearing of the assassination of Dr. King and feeling, somehow, it was a major loss for humanity.

Years later, after much study of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and on Dr. King in particular, I consider him to be one of all-time great Christian leaders—understanding as well as anyone—the cost of discipleship and how to live a life for others.

April 11, 2018, marks the 50^th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. The act was passed by Congress in 1968, just days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are pleasantly surprised that the recently passed FY18 federal budget includes significant additional resources for affordable housing. Frankly, we weren’t expecting this and are grateful that Congress is seeing a need for additional resources to address housing affordability across the country.

See the media release from Habitat for Humanity International:

At Habitat Wake, we are always up for a challenge and that’s a good thing since providing homeownership to families earning less than 60% of the area median income is quite a feat in itself.  However, lately the news from Washington begs the question, “Can you make it any harder?”

Here’s just a few recent proposals that make the task of providing affordable housing that much harder:

• The White House eliminates all funding programs that Habitat for Humanity utilizes in its’ FY19 budget proposal.