What’s Wrong with Habitat for Humanity?
Habitat for Humanity is an organization where volunteers and would be homeowners get together and build a home. The home will then be bought for a small monthly payment for a set period of time. The mortgage is low and affordable and caters to low income families, basically at poverty level, who could otherwise never afford to own a home. An example of what the mortgage could cost is 120 payments over 10 years at $70 dollars a month. No down payment seems to be required. Habitat for Humanity recipients will have to apply to be considered for a house. Habitat homeowners will get to bask in the joy of knowing their two hands along with caring volunteers labored with love to give rise to living quarters built especially for them.
While there are many reasons Habit for Humanity is a blessing for people who want to own their own home in the hopes for a better more fulfilled life, it remains a bittersweet force of destruction to our fragile ecosystem. Every time a house goes up Nature loses a piece of its Habitat.
It is of questionable concern where lumber to build affordable housing comes from. 40% of the Amazon Rain Forest has now been erased off the face of earth. 40% of Rain Forest gone in 40 years. In this decade it will be non-existent unless something is done to stop people living there from cutting down trees, burning land and polluting rivers. America imports close to half of all the Rain Forest timber. Whether a small or large portion of this is actually used in house construction doesn’t matter. Using any lumber at the expense of the Rain Forest shows no concern and lack of respect for life other than human.
If houses must be built then two or three families with one shared mortgage could live under one roof provided that it is a two or three story house. Each story would be owned by one of the families and the yard would belong to all of them.
Abandoned business buildings, deserted empty run down houses including trailer or mobile homes are all good sources of fixer uppers and should be preferably used instead of building from scratch. Renovation and repairs should cut building costs down and save the future homeowner money on the mortgage.
Habitat for Humanity should consider building Habitats for Wildlife. For every house that is built from scratch the same amount of land that is involved in achieving an individual homestead, the house, yard and any extra surrounding land included, should be set aside for Wildlife. The area should be furnished with a variety of trees, shrubs, bushes etc. A tank or pond should be built to supply water. Hunting should under no circumstance ever be allowed in a Habitat for Wildlife. The whole point is to give birds and animals a safe refuge plus let some type of reforestation take hold.
