Building The American Dream

Few volunteer efforts offer as immediate a sense of satisfaction as a day building a home for a deserving family.
Tri-Rivers Habitat For Humanity – a chapter of Habitat For Humanity International – is a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to eliminating substandard housing and homelessness in the community. Locally, the chapter has built nine homes in the past decade.
 “Habitat is founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, decent, affordable place to live in dignity and safety,” said Dane Skelton, a minister with Faith Community Church and member of the Board of Directors of the Tri-Rivers chapter.
When asked about why he chose to devote his time to building homes in the community, Skelton offered two reasons.

“The economics of Jesus Christ and the economics of free market capitalism,” he said. “The more we help people become homeowners, the stronger our society will be. Habitat For Humanity seems to me to be a very efficient way of helping people in our community.
“I know what it’s like to own that first home,” Skelton added. “It’s the American Dream at work.
“Habitat For Humanity sees itself as a way for people to graduate from government-subsidized housing.”
For volunteers, Skelton said the benefits outweigh the effort put into building a home for a deserving family.
“Anytime you volunteer on a Habitat For Humanity house, you come away with a great sense of accomplishment,” he said. “You can see what you have done. It gives you a sense of purpose. You are on a mission to build people homes.”
Skelton said that volunteering with Habitat is simply another way to spread the message of Christ.
“My life has been dedicated to the Great Commission, communicating the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ,” he said. “But for a long time, we evangelicals have only been doing half of the gospel. We’re big on teaching people to love God, but haven’t done so well loving our neighbors. But Habitat is a great vehicle for enabling us to do that.”
Not only does building a home for a deserving family help that family, Skelton said volunteers come away with a great sense of accomplishment for their efforts.
“Many people who decide to check out Habitat want to come to the work site and swing a hammer,” he said. “If Habitat does its job correctly, first-time volunteers come away feeling terrific. Skilled or unskilled, they can step back and say, ‘this was great. I helped build this house. I helped someone have a home.’”
Habitat For Humanity builds houses for no profit and provides them to the homeowner on an interest-free basis. Homeowners purchase their homes and make monthly mortgage payments over a 20-30 year period.
Funds collected from the mortgage payments allow Habitat to buy the materials to build more houses.
And the local chapter also invests in homes around the world.
“Habitat For Humanity follows a tradition very similar to the church. We tithe. Ten percent of the money we raise to build houses locally is sent to build houses somewhere else in the world,” Skelton pointed out.
Receiving a home through Habitat has the added benefit of teaching the new homeowners responsibility.
“Each homeowner is carefully screened and qualified and each has to invest 500 hours of ‘sweat equity’ in helping build the home,” Skelton said. “It’s not a handout, it’s a hand up. We don’t just give them a home, they have to work for it.”
In addition, each new homeowner signs a Deed of Trust that stipulates that they can lose the home if they default on the mortgage.
“The difference is that they don’t have to have a down payment and have the benefit of a no-interest loan on an amount roughly half the size of a mortgage for a similarly-equipped house,” the Board member said.
Working on a Habitat home is also an exercise in community building, according to Skelton.
“When bankers and barbers and homemakers and truck drivers work alongside homeowners, they build relationships,” he said. “When Baptists and Catholics and Methodists and Pentecostals put aside their differences and pick up hammers, they build bridges of understanding and respect. That makes our community a stronger place to live. It just creates a whole lot of goodwill.”
To volunteer or receive more information about Habitat For Humanity, call Skelton at Faith Community Church at 572-1474.