I used to work for an organization in Atlanta that was somewhat similar to Habitat for Humanity. We existed ostensibly to build and renovate low-cost housing for homeless people. Our basic course of action was 1) buy an abandoned house that numerous homeless people were squatting in; 2) roust the homeless people out so we could do the renovation (they literally had us carpenters doing this rousting, which was an interesting experience for a liberal college boy on a co-op like myself); 3) leave the house empty because we couldn’t find anyone who could both afford the mortgage and wanted to live in these neighborhoods. Like, it was crazy how much worse we were making the homeless problem.
Looking back on it decades later, I’m pretty sure this was a giant charity scam. We raised large amounts of donor money and very little of that went into actual renovations of anything. I’m not saying Habitat is or was like this, but we sure seemed to be.
You were part of the commodification of housing, sorry. This is a scam to kick squatters out and create “equity”, which can then be borrowed against for further real estate speculation
Your intentions were noble but you were used and your labor was stolen in the worst possible way, you created further wealth for wealthy people and evicted squatters into the street. I’m sorry that you were used in this way
I used to work for an organization in Atlanta that was somewhat similar to Habitat for Humanity. We existed ostensibly to build and renovate low-cost housing for homeless people. Our basic course of action was 1) buy an abandoned house that numerous homeless people were squatting in; 2) roust the homeless people out so we could do the renovation (they literally had us carpenters doing this rousting, which was an interesting experience for a liberal college boy on a co-op like myself); 3) leave the house empty because we couldn’t find anyone who could both afford the mortgage and wanted to live in these neighborhoods. Like, it was crazy how much worse we were making the homeless problem.
Looking back on it decades later, I’m pretty sure this was a giant charity scam. We raised large amounts of donor money and very little of that went into actual renovations of anything. I’m not saying Habitat is or was like this, but we sure seemed to be.
You were part of the commodification of housing, sorry. This is a scam to kick squatters out and create “equity”, which can then be borrowed against for further real estate speculation
Your intentions were noble but you were used and your labor was stolen in the worst possible way, you created further wealth for wealthy people and evicted squatters into the street. I’m sorry that you were used in this way
TBF we mitigated that to some extent by getting high a lot and knocking off at 3:30 to drink beers.