World Housing is a Vancouver-based non-profit that makes partnerships with developers to ensure that each time they sell an apartment or condominium, they also supply a $3000 prefabricated house to an impoverished family, living in what their website calls “Third World garbage dump communities.” World Housing is collaborating with developers in cities such as Toronto, Taipei, and Oahu, Hawaii. According to the New York Daily News, several New York developers are now considering joining this program.
Other companies have implemented this buy-one-give-one approach for such products as shoes, clothing, solar flashlights and soccer balls. World Housing asks the developer not to pass on the $3000 cost to the home buyer, but to cover it themselves, and then World Housing hires local youth in developing countries such as the Philippines and Cambodia to build the prefabricated houses.
“Ultimately, government isn’t the fix, religion isn’t the fix, business isn’t the fix, nonprofits aren’t the fix,” World Housing co-founder Peter Dupuis told Matt Chaban of New York Daily News. “The only way we can come up with solutions to the world’s problems is by working together, person-to-person, and technology is making that possible.”
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Tag: housing
This Charity Went Above and Beyond to Help Veterans in Need
Habitat for Humanity is known for building homes for needy people, but a new program in Tuscaloosa, Ala. will focus on veterans with dilapidated houses and no money to fix them up. Habitat for Humanity has teamed up with Federal Home Loan Bank and is inviting veterans to apply for up to $15,000 in assistance. Meredith Armstrong of Alabama’s 13 spoke to Rosalyn Boston, the widow of an Army veteran who has been unable to repair her home since it was damaged by a tornado hit the area in April of 2011. Boston said, “I just want my floors done, you know my bathroom done right, and the water to stop going up under my house so that I can live like I want to live.” And with help from Habitat for Humanity, she and other veterans and their families should be able to live comfortably in their homes for years to come.
MORE: This Air Force Veteran Couldn’t Fix His Roof, But He Still Had A Reason To Smile
Is This Idea the Answer to Poor Americans’ Housing Problems?
A budding “Family Self Sufficiency” program could be the solution to one of the greatest issues facing low-income Americans: housing. Rather than only focusing on the immediate needs of families like most rental assistance programs, the FSS improves the economic prospects of participants by helping them save money. The under-the-radar program already has some inspirational success stories.
What If Your Hometown Became Rich Overnight?
Gene Veeder, 57, is a simple man with curly gray hair, and tanned, soft wrinkles around his eyes. It’s not uncommon to find him riding horses on his 3,000-acre ranch that his grandparents homesteaded in 1918, tending to his cattle or playing in his country band, Lonesome Willy. Veeder grew up in quaint Watford City, N.D., a town with a population of 1,200 where the most excitement revolved around who was attending the annual rodeo dance, and every year he’d watch more long-term residents pack up and leave, searching for opportunity elsewhere.
Today, life has become more complicated for Veeder. As the executive director of the McKenzie County Job Development Authority and Tourism Board—a post he’s held for nearly two decades—he’s in charge of economic development for his hometown, a place that’s in the midst of a massive oil boom. In the past three years, thousands of workers from all over the United States have poured into town looking for jobs in the oil field. Watford City has seen the population multiply by 500 percent since 2010, ballooning to a town of more than 8,700, and the growth isn’t expected to slow down anytime soon (it’s projected to reach 16,800 by 2020). The kindergarten class of the local school went from around 18 to 113, and some 20,000 cars now drive through the town’s two-lane main street every day. Continue reading “What If Your Hometown Became Rich Overnight?”