Press Articles
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Article - Building Community
Author - Mathhew Broderick
Source - Hartford Business Journal
During its history, the Hartford-based firm JCJ Architecture (formerly Jeter, Cook & Jepson Architects) has designed its share of big scale projects in the Hartford region and around the country, including public schools, hotels, casinos, justice facilities, libraries and performing arts centers.
But for its 75th anniversary celebration, JCJ is doing something much smaller, but with big impact — donating $75,000 to Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity to construct two single-family homes in Hartford‟s Asylum Hill community.
“As an architectural firm, we see Habitat for Humanity as an organization that is well aligned with our firm‟s mission of „design that builds community‟,” said Barbara Hubbard, JCJ‟s director of communications. Read More
Article - Habitat Group Begins Building 16 Homes In City
Author - Jenna Carlesso
Source - The Hartford Courant
Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity has begun work on 16 single-family units near the intersection of South Marshall and Hawthorne streets. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012, said Brooke Penders, director of development for the organization.
Eight families have so far been chosen for the units, and the organization is accepting applications for the remaining eight. Each 1,200-square-foot unit will have three bedrooms and a garage.
"The safety of a neighborhood improves when you have homeownership," she said, "and when you have a good home that was well built, without a lot of issues, families thrive." Read More ...
Article - House of Hope
Author - Tom Yantz
Source - The Hartford Courant
"This is my house, and I've been here for going on 13 years now," she said from her three-bedroom ranch. "This is stability, security a new start, a new life."
Said McKinley Albert, Hartford Area Habitat For Humanity's development officer-private grants: "We also provide 50 hours of education on wills, mortgage insurance and other things. These are important tools for a new homeowner." She said 185 affordable homes have been constructed in the greater Hartford area -- over 150 are in Hartford -- since Hartford Area Habitat For Humanity received its affiliate charter in 1989. It currently has about 5,000 volunteers. Read More ...
Article - They Hammer in the Morning
Author - Tom Condon
Source - The Hartford Courant
"It seems impossible. It seems like the happy cacophony of hammers and saws just started, but Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity just celebrated its 15th anniversary. The nonprofit group has finished 107 dwelling units.
At the party a week ago, Habitat officials shredded a mortgage document in symbolic recognition that Gail Martin, one of the first Habitat homeowners, had paid off her home loan. I've never had this experience; I can only imagine the light-headed joy." Read More...
Article - Signs Of Stability In A Troubled Neighborhood
Author - Tom Condon
Source - The Hartford Courant
"Three years ago, Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity announced its most ambitious project to date. Instead of the infill strategy the organization had pursued — a few houses on this street, two on that one — Habitat leaders decided to build 30 units in 25 buildings in a three-block section of Hartford — in essence, to remake a whole neighborhood." Read More...
Editorial - Affordable Homeownership: Transforming Families and Neighborhoods
Author - Donald Shaw, Jr.
Source - The Hartford Courant
"Affordable Homeownership: Transforming Families Housing costs have risen more than 70 percent since 2000, nearly three times wage increases, resulting in too many workers spending “too much of their income on rent and mortgage payments, with increasingly less left over for food, transportation, clothing, healthcare and recreation,” according to the Partnership for Strong Communities latest action alert. Neighborhoods" Read More...
Article - Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth
Author - Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Source - The New York Times
"LAST week, the Pew Research Center published the astonishing finding that 37 percent of African-Americans polled felt that “blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race” because of a widening class divide.
From Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps the most fundamental assumption in the history of the black community has been that Americans of African descent, the descendants of the slaves, either because of shared culture or shared oppression, constitute “a mighty race,” as Marcus Garvey often put it. " Read More...
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Myths & Truths
MYTH: Habitat houses lower neighborhood property values.
TRUTH: Many studies of low-cost housing show that affordable housing has no adverse effect on other neighborhood property values. Habitat firmly believes its approach to affordable housing improves neighborhoods and communities by strengthening community spirit and increasing the tax base while building better citizens through the cooperative efforts involved in Habitat construction.
Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity - a proud Equal Opportunity Employer.