Jimmy Carter & Habitat for Humanity: Celebrity slum lords?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions — and, apparently, the homes in the neighborhoods along that hellish path are built by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. The Times of London reports on one of the celebrity charity’s biggest showcase projects in Jacksonville, Florida, Fairway Oaks, where residents claim their houses are crumbling due to shoddy construction:
Residents of a model housing estate bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities and hand-built by Jimmy Carter, the former US president, are complaining that it is falling apart.
Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers, including Carter, in a record 17-day “blitz” organised by the charity Habitat for Humanity.
Eight years later it is better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.
A forthcoming legal battle over Fairway Oaks threatens the reputation of a charity envied for the calibre of its celebrity supporters, who range from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt to Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Helena Bonham Carter.
The case could challenge the bedrock philosophy behind Habitat for Humanity, claiming that using volunteers, rather than professional builders, is causing as many problems as it solves.
April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a “darling of liberal social activists”. She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.
More from the ToL here.
The battle has been brewing for some time. A quick Google search shows that the New York Times covered the story in June 2007:
Seven years later, Ms. Zeigler is one of more than 50 Fairway Oaks homeowners who have problems with their houses and say they fear that the blitz construction was shoddy and that their land, adjacent to two former town dumps, is unstable or contaminated.
“My pride is gone,” Ms. Zeigler said, pointing to cracks in her house’s ceiling and its concrete slab foundation. “I’ve got a 25-year mortgage, and I’ve got stuff that needs to be addressed or I’m just paying my mortgage in vain, because I won’t have a house in 25 years because it will be falling apart.”
The Fairway Oaks owners took their complaints to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, and of 56 who answered a survey for Legal Aid, 41 reported cracked concrete slabs, 22 had cracked walls and 48 said their houses were infested with insects or rodents, presumably because of the cracks. Others reported mold or mildew, nails popping out of plasterboard and other problems. The Habitat for Humanity local affiliate, HabiJax, maintains that the land at Fairway Oaks is stable and that most problems there are housekeeping issues, not structural. City inspectors this month examined six houses and found no violations. But in a vulnerable population, the perceptions have a life of their own. A project built with sweat equity and good will has had unintended consequences, and costs.
All Jimmy Carter-bashing and schadenfreude aside, do the residents have a bona fide case or are these professional moochers trying to pin blame on others for their own lack of personal responsibility?
Probably a bit of both. A few of the houses seem to have been clearly uninhabitable. In 2005, the cracks in one foundation reportedly “became so severe that the house had to be lifted and settled on piers. Engineers hired by HabiJax found six feet of debris buried under the soil,” reports the NYT.
But was the entire project tainted?
Note this paragraph in the same NYT article:
In the early 1990s the land held a blighted public housing complex, built on land that had been used, in isolated pockets, as a dump. After complaints by residents, the Environmental Protection Agency tested the soil for contamination. The E.P.A. concluded that the land was safe but noted that two buildings had been demolished because of soil settling, possibly caused by debris decomposing under the soil. A later soil test found elevated levels of arsenic, but the Florida Department of Health determined there was no significant health risk.
Ronnie A. Ferguson, president of the Jacksonville Housing Authority, said the two buildings had been damaged by water runoff, not because of soil instability associated with buried debris.
I’ve watched enough of these “environmental justice” activists to know that they coach their clients to complain about vague ailments (”mysterious skin rashes”) that have no relation in reality to the environmental conditions they claim are the cause. These professional grievance-mongers have blocked countless private redevelopment and remediation projects — and milked tens of millions in settlements — based on bogus scientific and medical claims. Then there’s this:
Before October 2005, few knew how widely their complaints were shared. Then, Shirley Dempsey, president of the homeowners association, said she began having a series of dreams that she said were religious visions, leading her to discover problems in her house and others.
Uh-huh.
Other neighbors who didn’t share Dempsey’s “visions” have a more pragmatic take on the problems:
Some residents dismiss their neighbors’ complaints, attributing them to poor maintenance by first-time homeowners. “Lots of problems, people can take care of themselves,” said Dinelle Fields, 51. “Get a bleach bottle,” she said, referring to complaints about mildew.
In the end, I can’t say I feel too much sympathy for Jimmy Carter and his Hollywood partners. The Left has stoked both eco-zealotry and the entitlement culture with impunity. Perhaps they’ll feel a little less inclined to feed those beasts after getting bitten squarely in the ass.
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Categories: Jimmy Carter
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Carter’s chickens are comin home to roost!
And all of this couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy and organization.
GSP
“This is Sparta!”
Jimmy Carter built these homes for peanuts.
His.
My sister works for the man who started Habitat, who now runs a new version of it called The Fuller Center that does good work worldwide. He got run off Habitat by his board of directors in a power play. Habitat is now run by a mega-corporation guy, who earns around $250,000 a year, versus the original founder’s $25,000 a year salary. The new head of Habitat also moved the headquarters from the little south Georgia town of Americus to Atlanta, nearer an airport, et al. Habitat USED to be all about the houses and sweat equity by the purchasers, now it’s all about the Benjamins. One thing: many of the people that get these houses have the entitlement mentality built in, expecting the builders to continue paying for upkeep, plumbers, etc etc, even though THEY own the house. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Forever. Apparently.
Eco-zealots and entitlement parasites, they deserve each other.
I’m on the “gimme gimme gimme” side of the argument here. Just look at public housing in general.
DUH
When you swim in the pond full of leeches, some are inevitably going to get some stuck on you.
I had a series of dreams, too. Maybe they’re religious visions. They said “Borrow against your home equity. Buy a big-ass TV, a boat, a new luxury car and take a vacation someplace expensive, then miss a payment or two and get a bail-out”.
Can we all say SLUM (Several Liberal’s Unmitigated Meddling) Lords greasing the skids, as usual, of false hope and change? Ultimate destination? (Rhymes with (oh) ‘well’.)
At least they’re not building levees. Or are they?
Forget about the construction. My daughter looked into a HFH house because it was only going to cost her $40/month. I went to the orientation and was shocked at what I learned. If she “bought” this house, she would be paying down on one mortgage while HFH held two separate mortgages. She qualified for a 2/1 with no carport or garage. The price of the house was $128k. The only way out of the house was to sell it first to one of the families on their waiting list for a propped up price. If nobody on the waiting list wanted the house, you have to sell it on the market. NOBODY will buy a 2/1 without a carport or garage at $50k let alone for the amount she would owe with three mortgages on the house.
I told her to walk away or be trapped like a slave to something she would never be rid of – ever.
Look into the way these houses are financed and find some real problems. Oh, it is all aboveboard FOR HFH.
…$400/month… oops! LOL
Has HFH turned in the Fannie/Freddie of charities? They used to do good work.
I have volunteered for similar projects and I know from personal experience the “skill” of volunteer labor is often lacking. I would not be surprised if there were some real quality issues in this development since it was built by 10,000 volunteers in only 17 days. Without proper supervision and guidance an unskilled volunteer make a mess of even simple tasks quickly.
My children are chemically sensitive, having lived under Saddam Hussein’s oil well fire cloud and in a house that had the asbestos “removed”. Siting a housing development on a landfill is stupid in the extreme. I am not one to dismiss their complaints of illness etc without examining evidence.
At the same time, the liberal idea is to keep people “on the plantation”, and it is always form over substance with them. So…build the houses for the press, let the suckers move in, then bail out and search for the next photo op.
Yes, many of these people have been trained, as in New Orleans, to expect someone to come wipe their butts, but don’t ignore claims of illness “just because”. I have spent 20+ years keeping my children alive, and it’s not a small feat when they’ve had dangerous chemical exposure. Some people can take it, for a while. Some cannot.
When we laugh at all these claims “just because”, we look like fools.
“I’ve got a 25-year mortgage, and I’ve got stuff that needs to be addressed or I’m just paying my mortgage in vain, because I won’t have a house in 25 years because it will be falling apart.”
1. Why does someone have a mortgage on a free house from Habitat for Humanity?
2. Who expects to live in a house without continuously repairing it?
3. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m sticking up for terrorist loving Jimmy Carter, but who is really to blame that these houses have roaches? I doubt the Jimmeh trucked them in…
Credit isn’t a civil right.
Home ownership isn’t a civil right. Shelter? That I can agree to, but actual home ownership?
Owning a home takes either brains, money, or both. There is no such thing as “maintenance free,” and in Florida that means battling the sun and water that constantly pounds on those homes.
Mildew? Of course. What kind of an idiot wouldn’t expect mildew in a Florida home? you have to fight it.
BUT, that doesn’t change the fact that a “blitz build” is stupid, and Carter (and Co.) knows that. Just like that idiotic show “Extreme Makeover,” it’s all about feel-good for the people participating – with no regard for common sense. You can’t build a 4,000 square foot home in 7 days without cutting a LOT of corners.
But it FEELS good, so these idiots do it, and people line up to watch.
Just like the credit crunch, offering loans to people without the ability to pay for their loans, convinced that “it’s not their fault,” and “if they only got this initial loan, all will be well.” That’s stupid, just like this. Same emotions in play.
And the fact that they are building on landfills and otherwise un-sellable land? Again, this is about feel-good, and not about common sense. What makes us think that the “celebrities” leading this have any common sense? Just because you have a nice smile and are willing to take your clothes off for the camera does not make you qualified for any of this.
As Laura says “shut up and sing.”
GOOD homes take time to build, and that translates into MONEY. There is no free lunch, and Americans used to accept that. Not any more. We’re not done being stupid yet, which is why this recession will continue to grow.
The Me Generation and it’s progeny have never experienced what they’re getting now. They continue to click their heels and look for the easy way out, like “blitz builds.”
Imbeciles.
Building a home takes time and money. Maintaining a home takes time and money.
BUYING a good home takes time, money, and brains.
Otherwise you end up with a pile of un-maintained junk built on a landfill.
Some people never learn, and never will learn, and are can’t learn. Let’s extend more credit to them, or give them more blitz-built houses of cards.
As much as I dislike Peanut Brain Carter and the Hollyweird crowd I do feel some modicum of sympathy for them. It just goes to prove the old saying, “no good deed goes unpunished.” It almost sounds like these 1st time homeowners expected Habitat for Humanity to provide regular maintenance and house cleaning services for them.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE (mo-lone lah-veh) Translation: Come and take them!
They wanted to build it on an Indian Burial Ground, but all of the good ones were taken.
Carter’s a boneheaded idiot. Of course, I can only name one President we’ve had since who wasn’t.
I guess America’s leadership will only be as intelligent as its electorate, as further evidenced by the coming regime.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Agreed.
But remember how, until Clinton started making out like a bandit with the post-term paid speaking engagements, liberals used to love comparing the post presidencies of Carter to President Reagan, belittling Reagan for making paid speeches while Carter worked for Habitat?
I do, and that’s why I can’t help but think this some sort of comeuppance for Carter and the Left’s sanctimony over the years.
slum lords = financial supporters
We could not trust the man with the Presidency and now we can not trust him with a hammer and square. I guess he did make Gerald Ford and that proverbial box of rocks look good. That is Maxine Waters next to him I do believe. Fits.
I’d guess it is also known for high rates of drug use, out of wedlock births, and government dependency. All of which, just like the cockroaches, is fault of the builders. Or George Bush.
Well said Zorro. The sad thing is these are the folks running the country now, or how else do you think obama got elected?
I agree about fault being on both sides. I just listed my house with an agent and had to disclose everything including whether the property was a former dump site. Regardless of who paid for the property, the current owner has the right to know everything about the property.
That being said, I highly doubt it’s HFH’s fault that they have bug problems. Hire an exterminator (who doesn’t have one?) and fix the cracks in your walls. If the owners don’t have the money to maintain the property, they shouldn’t own it. As has been said millions of times, home ownership is NOT a right, it’s a privilege.
Well put, Arizona N.
You get what you pay for, I guess. I’ve never imagined the likes of Depp, Pitt, Firth, Bale or Bonham-Carter to be experts in a field that is so heavily reliant upon the exact study and skill of engineering.
That said, isn’t Jimmy Carter an engineering graduate of the US Naval Academy? Shouldn’t he have had some basic questions before laying his foundations on top of a shifting garbage heap? (I’m referring directly to the Fairway Oaks Project, not his foreign policy!) So, what’s up with that?
Cracking foundation is serious business, perhaps an an indicator of poor survey and engineering. Building structure on top of anything that shifts (no less a decomposing garbage heap) seems risky to me. Up here in the Northeast, it leads to much costlier problems to fix – like radon gas leakage, etc, and makes reselling property a nightmare.
Unless Carter’s organization forewarned their home buyers about the stupid risks of buying a house built upon a settling garbage heap, then I see potential litigation here.
4 years ago I bought a new house now valued at $280,000. After the first year, I noticed 5 large cracks in the drywall on the first floor. I also had a leak in the foundation which was bringing large amounts of water into the basement whenever it rained. A few months later, mold was developing quickly on the second floor stairway overhang just below a widow.
To make a long story short, I called in tradesman to fix all these problems before they developed into larger more expensive ones. That’s just par for the course when you own a house.
As for the cockroaches, no amount of foundation or ceiling degeneration will bring in these insects. They seek food and if you don’t clean up after a meal for extended periods of time, they will come. Even if you live in a mansion built by god himself, roaches will visit if you keep dirty dishes in the sink and food out on the counter or table overnight.
Carter was never in the US Navy which is a requirement for graduation from the US Naval Academy. He was an instructor at one of the Navy’s Nuclear Power Schools. This is not particularly prestigious. Your job there is to teach from a detailed syllabus. At the time I foolishly thought that he was pro-nuclear power. Imagine that!
Looks like the roof of hell is shingled with good intentions… unless they used tiles.
I personally think it is a program to get people on permanent Federal assistance. After all, look who started Habitat!
I guess it is impossible for Liberals to learn these basic concepts.
People who can’t take care of themselves can’t take care of anything else. People need skills and knowledge not handouts. These do-gooders fail to see that giving someone a home may not be the best thing to do, since it creates other unforeseen problems for the new home owner. Earning one’s way is still the best method for personal advancement.
pclevenger your information:
is incorrect. Check Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter. He did graduate from Annapolis, and did serve on the diesel electric submarine USS Pomfret. He trained for position as engineer officer on the nuclear submarine USS Seawolf.
That said, his presidency and foreign policy horrify me. His work with HFH is surely an example of further incompetance, and not just with a hammer (LOL).
I’ve always wondered how those HFH houses would hold up if they were not built by professionals. Well, now I know.
I’m also sure many of these people have never taken care of anything before in their lives. Visit any poor neighborhood and you’ll see graffiti, trash, and junk dumped all over the place. That’s the difference between handing a guy a fish and teaching him how to fish.
HFH has good (road to hell)intentions – but bad building judgement apparantly in the case of Fairway Oaks. Free or not, I would be upset if I found out my home was built on a garbage dump or toxic waste or swampland. HFH doesn’t think (or care) when it walks away from a ‘finished’ project. They do not understand that if a person or a family cannot afford a home or an apartment or a condo in the first place, they really can’t expect them to maintain one.
Most public housing I’ve seen over the past 30 years slowly degrades because the residents don’t have pride in ownership or any monetary skin in the game. Eventually, public housing becomes uninhabitable and is torn down – and replaced with more public housing (except these days instead of apartment buildings, Section 8 is doling out homes – See San Francisco).
Fairway Oaks is a shining example of ‘if it’s too good to be true – it is too good to be true’ victimization. They have effectivly substituted one form of misery for another – except that it’s now in a new location and a burden upon the community they chose to build in.
As for the ‘blind eye’ engineering inspections and land surveys that we’re seemingly non-existant or ignored in the case of Fairway Oaks, the town and county could now be effectively sued by the Fairway Oaks residents – the problems seem to require more than ’splashing bleach on mildew’ types of problems. Again – lack of pride in ownership and a lack of basic funds to perform repairs will allow the degradation to continue – and HFH will continue to pave to road to hell with vicitization and broken dreams on a tax-exempt basis.
Jimmy Carter is the worst president I can remember–back to Harry Truman days. However, I think we should “cut him a little slack” on the Habitat for Humanity projects. He seems to be an honestly motivated Christian in trying to help others.
***
I am glad to see someone pointed out that he is an Annapolis graduate and did serve honorably in our Navy. I think he must have been a bad military history student.
***
It was obvious to me–a Morrill Act (state cow college) graduate–what Beau James needed to do when the Iranian Mullah’s kidnapped our Tehran embassy personnel. Iran was locked in deadly combat with Iraq and needed to sell oil and to buy arms and military supplies. A naval blockade of their coast and bombing of the rail lines and roads into Iran would have caused real misery for our enemy.
***
Jimmy Carter seems to be going senile now–but he never understood what the prime job of the president is–to PROTECT AND DEFEND OUR COUNTRY and it’s citizens all over the world. Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Regan would have taken care of the Iranian problem with real military power.
***
My guess is that in two years of the O’Bummer presidency we will start looking up to Jimmy Carter as a good president by comparison.
***
John Bibb
Oops -too early in Hawaii…
I’ll help pry the top off this can of worms a little further. There are several of the HFH in the town in which I live. Each of the unwed women (no men have received one that I am aware of) who received one claimed to be poor with a mess of kids. They have claimed they can’t afford other housing. Yet, I notice, without fail, that once the house is built and they are living in it that these women all go out and buy high dollar vehicles. Usually, these vehicles have those silly hub caps that spin. My question has always been: If they can afford a high dollar car note then why can’t they afford to buy a home without HFH assistance and drive a less expensive vehicle? This is all part of what I have started calling the White Guilt Entitlement Syndrome. Whites feel guilty and the minorities feel entitled.
Being familiar with the type of people that reside in these types of homes I can’t help but wonder how any of the problems are a result of homeowner neglect or abuse of their properties. Not that I think the volunteers built top quality homes but I place a lot of blame on the homeowners themselves. They are of the same type that live in public housing.
It’s not a question of whether Jimmy Carter is honorable, although some people here will doubt that he is. I personally believe he’s as honorable a man who has ever lived. He truly believes in what he believes in, and lives his life by that code.
His Code, however, is a Fool’s Code – and Jimmy Carter is a Fool. Not a person who acts foolish, but an out and out Fool. Like many other liberals and democrats, he is educated while still being an absolute fool.
The points made here by me and many others are irrefutable. Public housing is a CATASTROPHE, for reasons that Carter and the fools that think like him ignore. They truly believe that poor people are poor because of bad breaks, and a system that is stacked against them, and a lack of opportunity, and all of the other folly that these Fools believe.
And like all good lies, they find plenty of evidence to support them – and you can. The fact is that there ARE some people who have just had a run of incredibly bad fortune. There ARE people who have been discriminated against, etc.
But you can’t deny the law of averages – most poor people are poor because they aren’t smart, talented, or industrious enough not be be poor.
Such is life. Not everyone is born looking like a Movie Star, able to fly Hornets, or tall and talented enough to play in the NBA either. Nobody questions these things – but when it comes to the ability to get and hold a good paying job, imbeciles like Carter and his friends just don’t accept that this is how life works.
Not everyone is cut out for home ownership, and it is most DEFINITELY NOT any kind of Civil Right.
Habitat for Humanity is Public Housing by another name. And like Public Housing it is a rat’s nest of people who don’t know or care how to maintain their property, surrounded by lots of people all too eager to exploit them.
Carter and HFH foolishly led these lambs to the slaughter. They built houses on a landfill, then gave those houses to people who couldn’t maintain them even if they were built on bedrock.
I wish him ill only to the degree that it stops him, and not in any personal way. He and his ilk must be stopped, since their folly becomes our folly. Who will end up paying for this disaster?
The hard working people who already pay for everything else, of course.
What an embarassment. Carter has turned all he touches into crap. Look at what he did to our country in the late 70’s.
Richardson down…is it too much to hope that Hildabeaste is also going down? Take a look at this recent link from The New York Times of all places:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28485901
Or, you can find it on MSNBC news links on the Internet Explorer home page.
Sorry, I don’t know how to make it a real link.
My brother (who moved to a major NW liberal city from Boise) went to NO to work on some HFH houses. He came back utterly disgusted and proclaimed he had become racist because of the constant hard time he got when he told people they were just fixing the house…not handing out new TV’s and cars. I had to explain to him you are not racist…you just don’t like people with an entitlement mentality (skin color does not apply in the least).
When losers collide.
Shades of that Good Samaritan judgement by a California judge last week.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The agrieved folks will probably settle for $300k each from a sympathetic PC oriented judge and have J. Carter and crew come on down and build them another house.
BTW, I hire a pest control company to keep bugs and pests off the property.
Cracked slab, hire a concrete repair firm. Or maybe some people are not meant for home ownership?
I was working with HFH up until a few months ago when they laid me off. Due to severe mismanagement our branch was near $1 million in the hole. Now I sure I’m biased and bitter. But if HabiJax is anything like the one where I’m at, they have severe problems, such as:
1) Half the owners are dead beats that weren’t paying there mortgages on time. If it’s like my former employer, instead of being forclosed upon, they get numerous chances and payment restructures before they’re kicked out. HFH doesn’t like forlcosing on people as it makes their numbers look bad, so a the dead beats stay. Hence, if you can’t afford your mortgage, you can’t afford needed maintenance.
2) The sites where the houses were built, were likely chosen because the acquisition costs were $0. Since they got the land from the Public Housing Authority, that means they got land that the local politicians didn’t want. As local politicians love putting there names on things like affordable housing, you can bet that if they didn’t want the land for their own project, then something was severely wrong with the area.
3)Contractors love to donate their trash for a tax donation. Sometimes this trash gets used in a house.
4)Half of their construction staff are probably AmeriCorps members with no previous construction experience. When they supervise the volunteers, they’re often coming with more experience than those they’re watching over. Mistakes can happen and they won’t be caught.
…I have numerous other complaints, but you get the picture. The entire model is flawed and it can lead to some crappy, crappy houses that are lived in by some crappy, crappy people.
I hate to be supporting Mr. Peanut, but this maybe a case where the celebrity factor threw a monkey wrench in the whole matter.
I have had had mixed experiences with HFH. In the town I used to live in, some HFH homes were built and it was great to see, after they were sold, people decorating for the holidays and palnting flowers. Bush did have it right. Ownership is a good idea, but not all are ready for ownership. On the other hand, when I contacted them to volunteer as an underwriter for the mortgage loans, I never received a response.
It appears that each chapter of HFH has some autonomy, which would mean some are better than others.
Well, when the houses fall down at least they won’t have to haul the rubble to the dump. Just grade out another layer of dirt and build again.
This is delicious. What amazes me about the media is why they didn’t ask Jimmy Carter “Who built YOUR HOME ?” while he grandstands about Habitat for Humanity (and how wonderful he is compared to conservatives.
Could not happen to more deserving people. There is nothing noble or good about HFH. HFH is essentially Socialism masquerading as Charity with a component of Responsibility and Self-reliance.
This clearly points out why people like the HFH folk will never conquer poverty, not that they care.
Funny how Bernie Madoff did the same thing as HFH, but he is considered a crook.
I have a friend who buys abandoned houses, fixes them up and then rents them to Section 8 residents. The women that rent his houses also drive expensive cars. He said it is all under the table drug money.
To me, it seems to be a combination of homeowners who don’t know how to own a home and take care of it, and builders like this:
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/