Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

According to the U.S. government, "poor" means that a household's income falls below a "poverty line" that was defined back in the mid-1960s. At the time of its inception, the poverty baseline measure was set at approximately three times the annual cost of a nutritionally adequate diet. It was assumed that this amount would enable a family to meet basic needs. It may have then; it certainly doesn't now.

The 2007 poverty line for a family of four, as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services, is $20,650 per year. Would this annual income realistically cover a family's basic needs? In the Twin Cities, it clearly would not.

Just to afford "fair market rent" on a small one-bedroom apartment in the Twin Cities, a wage earner must make $13.56 per hour, or $28,205 per year. For a two-bedroom apartment, the income needed to afford the rent jumps to $34,195 annually.

For families that dream of home ownership, the outlook is much starker. In 2006, the median home cost in the Twin Cities was $242,000. The annual income needed to afford that home is $82,901 - four times the poverty rate for a family of four.

Because housing is one of the largest monthly costs a family must incur, low-income families often have no choice but to live in substandard housing. It's all they can afford.

Access to safe, decent, affordable housing impacts the long-term success of a family and has implications that reach into all areas of life, including employment, education and a healthy living environment.

As the Minneapolis Foundation has stressed in their Minnesota Meeting series, "A home is more than shelter. It is a critical determinant of opportunity in our society."

Home ownership provides opportunities that can positively impact families for generations.

But in recent years, rising home values and rising interest rates in the Twin Cities have caused home ownership to drop dramatically among low-income wage earners.

Affordable housing options are rapidly diminishing for a broad range of Minnesotans that earn less than 50 percent of the median income.

In the suburbs, the disparity is growing even more rapidly. Last year, the Brookings Institution reported that for the first time, suburban poor outnumber their urban counterparts. In response, Sun Newspapers ran a wonderful and eye-opening series of stories this past spring addressing poverty in the Twin Cities suburbs.

Quite frankly, the growing economic disparity between low-income families and the rest of our community is unconscionable when we have the resources as a community to do something about it.

Organizations with housing expertise like Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity can provide the leadership necessary to turn vision into reality.

Twin Cities Habitat builds market-rate homes that are kept affordable through the zero percent interest mortgages that we issue to homebuyers. In our 22-year history, less than 2 percent of our homeowners have experienced foreclosure. This has remained steady despite skyrocketing foreclosure rates in the sub-prime market.

We couldn't have achieved these results without community support. Twin Cities Habitat's building model is effective because we bring together thousands of partners and volunteers, people of different backgrounds working for the common goal of providing safe, decent and affordable housing.

Some of our partnerships go beyond addressing the tangible solution of building affordable housing. One partnership in particular, Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity, also works to raise awareness about the need for safe, decent and affordable homes through the Thrivent Builds Mobile, a 67-foot multi-media exhibit on wheels that is traveling across the United States.

Stepping inside the exhibit enables each visitor to actually experience what it might be like to live in substandard housing. It also highlights the benefits of decent housing and opportunities for individuals to make a positive difference.

I'd like to invite readers to experience this unique exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair, through Sept. 3. See firsthand how we can all contribute to the solution.

For more information, visit www.tchabitat.org.