Habitat for Humanity International Quiz

Answer: False

Habitat is not a give-away program. Though the local poverty level is the main income guideline for selecting a partner family, a Habitat home has a mortgage just like most commercially-built homes, and partner families must put in 300 hours of work ("sweat equity") for Habitat to qualify. What Habitat is able to do is offer the homes interest-free with an affordable mortgage rate.

The new owners' mortgage payments are then used to finance more homes. Habitat has been criticized for only working with families that have shown ability to pay a mortgage - a partner family must pass a credit and criminal record check - but the fact remains that all partner families do fall below the poverty line, even though they do have steady incomes and demonstrate an ability to repay a mortgage.

As such, Habitat's foreclosure rate has remained around an admirable 2%.

Answer: False

In fact, the multi-faith coalition that I am working with right now has member congregations that are Muslim, Buddhist, Baha'i, and Jewish - and that doesn't even count my own church, the lovable Unitarian Universalists. (We do have Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Presbyterians as well, just to even things out a bit.) Habitat was founded as a Christian organization, and remains so, but there is no religious requirement at all to become a homeowner.

Answer: Millard and Linda Fuller

Though President Carter has been a great supporter of Habitat for many years, he is not, contrary to popular belief, its founder. The Fullers, who do hail from the same part of Georgia as President Carter, built the Habitat model from their experiences with Koinonia Partners, a collective support organization in Sumter County, Georgia.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton presented Mr. Fuller with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the two highest awards the US government can bestow on a civilian.

Answer: The home must be commercially salable

These basic standards - decent, simple, affordable - allow a great deal of flexibility in the homes' nature, especially given Habitat's wide-ranging projects. For example, most Habitat homes in the United States are frame construction with sheet rock walls, while a house in Latin America may be built with concrete blocks.

In some African regions, most cooking is done outside, so the home is built accordingly - with an outdoor kitchen area.

Answer: 225,000

These homes have sheltered over one million people in over 3,000 communities. All work is accomplished by local affiliates, and these are autonomous in how they select sites, find partner families, service mortgages, and raise funds.

Answer: Saudi Arabia

One outlet for this international activity is Habitat's "Global Village Trip" program, which sees teams of between eight and fourteen volunteers do construction in a remote location for around two weeks.

Habitat does not have a strong presence in most Islamic Middle East countries. A notable exception is Egypt, where there are seventeen Habitat affiliates.

Answer: All of these

Among these are 3.6 million children, 1.6 million elderly, and 1.3 million disabled adults. For more information, see http://www.huduser.org/publications/PDF/trends.pdf. (If anyone has more up-to-date information than this, please let me know).

Answer: False

Several Women Build homes have male homeowners. These homeowners work on the houses right along with the female crews. In addition, many of the specialized subcontractors that work on these projects may indeed be men. As their website
(http://www.habitat.org/wb/default.aspx) says, Women Build is about empowering women, not excluding anybody.

Answer: Home refinancing offers that subvert Habitat's mission and put inexperienced homeowners in a bad economic situation

As financial services executive Chris Miller puts it, "You can't get a better deal than 0%. There's absolutely no reason [for a Habitat partner family] to refinance." Still, many partner families do refinance their homes in order to "cash out" the equity they have built up.

Unfortunately, this often results in a mortgage payment that the family is unable to afford. In the example cited by "Business Week", a family making less that $20,000 per year saw their payments jump from $396 to $872; under their new adjustable rate, this payment may grow even higher over time. For more information, see the article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15654489/

Answer: All of these!

With the exception of the annual Home Builders' Blitz, which is a special effort to recruit construction professionals to work on a project, most volunteers are relatively unskilled when they start with Habitat. As my local coordinator often says, there is a place for everybody. To find your local affiliate, go to http://www.habitat.org/cd/local/

I didn't really mention ReStore in this quiz. For more information of these great places for the home do-it-yourself'er, see http://www.habitat.org/env/restores.aspx

As always, I'd love to hear any comments you might have, especially those that will make this a better quiz. Thanks for playing.