Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity is on the brink of selling its first homes in Scott County, an event that reflects a growing suburban emphasis in the organization.

BY SARAH LEMAGIE
Minneapolis Star Tribune

October 25, 2006

Every month, Fathia Good pays $580, plus heat and telephone, for a garden-level apartment in St. Paul where cockroaches climb dirty walls. Good shares a bedroom with her 2-year-old daughter, and her two sons, 16 and 11, sleep in the other. Her mother and sister, who lived in a Kenyan refugee camp until they came to the U.S. in 2004, have pallets on the tile floor in the living room.

It's a cramped lifestyle. So when talk turns to the townhouse that Habitat for Humanity built with her in downtown Savage, the smile on the face of the 35-year-old woman from Somalia lights up her dark apartment.

"It is really good and awesome," she said. Her new home has four bedrooms, so she and her daughter Samira will each have their own. It has a back yard where she envisions a vegetable garden, and it's close to good schools.

Good's townhouse, which was dedicated last weekend, is the first Habitat house in Scott County, which is also the last of the seven metro-area counties to be served by the nonprofit affordable housing organization.

In the Twin Cities, Habitat for Humanity historically has built mostly in core urban areas, but that's changing as land prices rise and job growth draws more workers from the cities.

"I would anticipate that we'd see 75 percent of our production in fast-growing suburbs in the next three to five years," said Sue Haigh, president of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity.

For Habitat, which keeps housing costs down by offering zero-interest mortgages, land is a key expense that often determines where the group builds. In the Twin Cities affiliate's early years, most of its lots were donated by the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. But with the recent boom in the real estate market, "it has been extremely hard to find land over the last couple of years," Haigh said. Today, the group spends an average of $43,000 to acquire a site for a home.

It was land that brought Habitat to Scott County. The county's Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which built some affordable rental housing nearby, sold the group the land for the Savage townhouse for $1.

If Habitat is ready for Scott County, Scott County is also ready for Habitat. A Metropolitan Council study released this year projects the demand for new affordable housing units between 2011 and 2020 in communities throughout the seven-county metro area. Minneapolis was No. 1 on the list, followed by St. Paul. Prior Lake and Shakopee were fourth and fifth, and Savage made the top 10.

Karl Batalden, who coordinates government and community relations for Habitat, attributed the high projected demand for affordable housing in Scott County cities to the migration of jobs to the suburbs.

"It makes sense for the businesses that are hiring these people to have workers who live close by," he said. "If you own a factory in Shakopee and there's a blizzard outside, there's a greater chance of workers getting to work on time if they're living in Shakopee than if they're driving from Minneapolis."

That doesn't mean that a Habitat home built in Shakopee, for example, will go to a low-income family from Shakopee. The organization receives 10 applications from prospective homeowners for every one it can serve, Haigh said, and the organization can't discriminate against applicants based on where they live. Plus, the tendency of inner cities to harbor the kinds of dismal, unsanitary apartments that Habitat for Humanity strives to move people out of means that many suburban Habitat homeowners come from Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Usually, homeowners are happy to move wherever Habitat finds a site, said Mike Nelson, Habitat land acquisition manager.

In Good's case, it was a little more complicated. She applied to be a Habitat homeowner three times before being chosen, and the first home Habitat offered her was in Hastings. Good, whose $16-per-hour job at Sam's Club in Bloomington often begins at 6 a.m., worried that the long commute would force her to leave her boys to get ready for school on their own. She turned down the house.

Now, though, her sons are older and her mother and sister can help with child care, and she was thrilled at the chance to move to Savage. Like all Habitat homeowners, Good joined volunteers to put in hundreds of hours of labor -- called "sweat equity" -- building her own house. She hopes to move in by December.

Sarah Lemagie • 612-673-7557 • This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it