The math surrounding building affordable houses is “more broken” than Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford has ever seen it. The challenge is compounded by supply shortage that is impacting the entire housing market.
However, Reckford says the attention housing is commanding at the local, state, and federal level gives him optimism that creative solutions and innovations can help builders deliver more affordable housing options in the future.
In a conversation with BUILDER, Reckford discussed the state of the affordable housing market as well as partnerships and initiatives from Habitat for Humanity to bring energy-efficient and sustainable solutions to the affordable market. He also shared the role Habitat for Humanity plans to take in the relief and recovery efforts in the Southeast following the impacts of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in recent weeks.
How has 2024 been for Habitat for Humanity to date? What initiatives, partnerships, and programs have been particularly impactful from the organization’s perspective?
It’s a long-term story but more than ever this year has been characterized by partnership. There’s a recognition that the math of building houses that are affordable to low- and moderate-income families is more broken than I have ever seen it. We are finding the solutions have to be cities working with the private sector, working with civil society organizations to figure out how to increase the supply of housing. We’ve been really consumed with how we can grow the supply in the U.S. In many ways, those same themes are true in all of the countries we work in around the world.
We just finished our Cost of Home advocacy campaign. We work in over 1,000 communities in every state and this was really about changing local, statewide, and federal policies to increase the supply of affordable housing and/or preservation of affordable housing. That led to work that either created or preserved over $23 billion in government funding and helped more than 9.5 million people gain access to affordable housing across the country. Our philosophy has long been to advocate for all types of affordable housing, but our specific niche is affordable homeownership.
A theme that has gotten bigger and bigger but something that we have been involved in for a very long time is energy efficiency and sustainability. We were part of creating a new company called Power Forward Communities. That’s a coalition of five service and housing organizations that successfully applied for EPA funding for greenhouse gas reduction funds. It’s all money to create net-zero or near-net-zero housing or housing retrofits. Our view from an energy-efficiency perspective is that our families most need the energy savings so we have long built energy-efficient homes. As energy prices have taken a large piece of the budget, that has become a higher priority for us. To make sure that as we invest in sustainability that it doesn’t become a regressive tax on low income families and make sure we bring them the opportunities to benefit from new technologies and being able to purchase or rent highly energy-efficient homes.
How important are the efforts to ensure energy efficiency and sustainability solutions are accessible in the affordable market?
Habitat was a pioneer in this space. Back when I first joined in 2005, green building was a luxury product. The products were for only the wealthy. Our view was that our families need the health and energy impacts of these innovations. We had a partnership with The Home Depot Foundation back then and they subsidized the delta between taking our basic Habitat home up to what was going to be the future Energy Star standard or [offer] a larger subsidy if we went to LEED, EarthCraft, or one of the very high-energy efficiency standards. We built or improved about 5,000 homes and [the results] measured. What we found was that families could pay a higher mortgage for a more energy-efficient home because their total cost of ownership would go down. Then we saw the production builders begin to build more energy-efficient homes as well. This has been a long-term theme for us.
If you fast-forward, one of our signature events is our annual build with President and Mrs. Carter [the Carter Work Project]. In conjunction with President Carter’s 100th birthday, we built in St. Paul, Minnesota, [two weeks ago]. One of the big themes was energy efficiency. We were working on the first 30 homes of what is going to be an 1,000-home community with a new headquarters for local utility creating 1,000 new jobs in east St. Paul. It was a great example of many of our partners showcasing their better products. Andersen Windows was a partner, and they gave us high energy-efficiency windows; Schneider Electric, who provides electric panels for all Habitat houses, gave us some more advanced panels so all of these homes could at least be near net zero or net zero ready; Whirlpool upgraded the Energy Star appliances; [and] GAF came in with their solar shingles. Those are just a few examples of manufacturers coming in to lower the cost rather than it being something that drives up the cost. These were helping us make the homes more affordable.
What is Habitat for Humanity’s view of the state of the affordable housing market? What are the reasons for concern and optimism in the sector?
The big challenge is the lack of supply. Therefore, it is very hard to fix the cost acceleration unless we create more housing. I would argue we underbuilt for much of a decade after the 2008 crisis, [and most stakeholders] would agree that we’ve got at least a 2.5 million unit shortage.
What gives me optimism is I have never seen the government leadership so focused on housing. At the U.S. Conference of Mayors, housing was No. 1 on the agenda. Every mayor I have talked to, housing is at the top of their agenda. They are saying it is not just a moral imperative but it is an economic imperative. You cannot continue to grow with jobs unless you hire workers and you cannot hire workers if they cannot afford to live in your community. That is putting housing closer to the center. Even at the federal level, I am hearing more from senators and Congress than I have ever heard before recognizing that housing is becoming an imperative.
Hopefully that then turns into some kind of action. The city of Atlanta put out a policy that said if the builder will include affordable units in their project, they will fast-track the entitlement and approval processes. That is worth real money for a builder. It’s wonderful if Habitat builds a mixed-income development, [but] it’s even more wonderful if everybody would be building mixed-income developments.
With the recent impacts from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in the Southeast, how is Habitat for Humanity working to aid the relief and recovery efforts?
I think there are so many disasters around the world that they don’t stay in the news that long, and therefore they are forgotten far too quickly. We will be responding to both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, and, unfortunately, some communities got hit by both. We have heard from over 150 of our affiliates that were impacted by Helene. We are doing the assessment for the impact from Milton.
Most of the money after a disaster like Helene or Milton goes to the relief effort. I would certainly encourage people to be generous in helping. First you have to rescue people, then you have to feed and make sure that people are taken care of in the crisis. But then, you move to recovery. Where Habitat has historically played the key role is in the rebuilding effort. The relief effort may take weeks, but the recovery effort sometimes takes a decade or more. I would encourage people as they think about helping the relief to also reserve funds and also think about donating for the long-term recovery. What’s happened is areas that have never flooded before have flooded. You are going to have families that didn’t have flood insurance impacted. There’s going to be years of work. Florida is our No. 1 producing state in the country [so] we have a lot of capacity to do the work, but it is going to take a lot of funding.
In addition to hurricane recovery efforts, what other initiatives and programs does Habitat for Humanity have planned through the end of 2024 and for 2025?
We will continue working very hard on leveraging with private-sector partners on these EPA funds around energy efficiency, and we hope that money can start flowing in the next year and turn into a significant amount of additional funding for building energy-efficient housing. That is a good example where the lines start blurring in good ways. If we can impact the supply chain, that will help the whole home builder community. If we can have better products and make it easier to build.
Our U.S. team is going to be very heavily focused in the near term on helping all of the affiliates who were impacted by the hurricanes. That is going to be a major focus.
On the policy side, continuing to think about how we get more land, more financing, more support for increasing supply. Demonstrating the good models of cities working with private builders and nonprofits like Habitat to create more housing, which I think is only the solution.
We will [also] have the World Urban Forum [in Egypt in November], which the United Nations hosts every other year. Our focus there is going to be very heavily on housing supply.
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