kids electric car garage image
Force
We're going to apply for a home at the next meeting, but I wanted to know ahead of time what all comes in the home.
We lost everything to a fire & have been in a small rv for months until just recently getting in a small mobile home, (only 2 bd when we need 4-5), so a home would be great.
We work & pay bills & qualify $ wise & the sweat equity would be no problem, so I'm not concerned with the application process or stuff like that. We even own the burned home, land & all, so there wouldn't be any land payment added to the mortgage.
I just wondered what all actually comes in the house.
* Is it completely finished inside?
* Do they include appliances, heat & cooling units, etc.?
* Do they offer pkgs that actually furnish the home, like with beds etc.?
* Do they only build certain blueprints or can you decide anything on the home, like if you want the bedrooms clumped together or seperated etc?
* What about colors?
* How basic are the designs, such as do they only have bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, & living room or do they have utility rooms, pantries, & dining rooms too?
* Do they do anything to the yard, like fences etc? (ours burned with the house)
* Can you determine your energy source for the house, like can you decide if you want natural gas or electric for your stove, etc?
* Do they do "green homes"?
* What about under the houses, the pipes & stuff in the ground, (ours are very old clay & would have to be upgraded per city code for us to rebuild or repair), do they add the cost of digging up all the old utility stuff onto the cost of your house? (I know they have to run new lines & foundations on all of them, but what about that old stuff being removed?)
* Do they do basements or attics or garages?
And I guess the most important question is, the sweat equity that you accrue, how is it calculated? * Do they count each hour at a specific rate, like at minimum wage or something, then take it off your mortgage like real $, instead of a wage kinda thing?
(I don't understand that part except that there's a minimum of 300 hours at our local chapter.)
* What about if we have 10 friends that all put in 100 hours each, does that count as 1000 hrs off our mortgage or are they just counted as volunteers & only our hours count?
* How old do you have to be for your hours to count, like if our 9, 11, 15, & 16 yr old help does that count?
* And what about AFTER our house is built & we're in it, can we still do the sweat equity thing to pay toward our home or is that only before the house is built?
Just, if anyone knows things like this, I'd appreciate the information.
I can find questions of the app process & what it's like to volunteer but I really need someone that knows these kinda details too.
Thank you
Thank you for all the info in the 1st answer, do you know if they tear down & get rid of the old house or if the property must be cleared by us before they're willing to build?
I was asking about the possibility of furniture because we were told they may work with Salvation etc to help replace some since we won't have enough basics. We're on craigslist couches at the moment.
And I was asking about the garage & fence & basement because it's in a "historic district" so there are a lot of older but larger homes & they all have those so I didn't know if the code required it, if it would still be approved. The code does require a fence.
And I wasn't worried about colors, just a basic house would be a Godsend, I was just curious how involved the new home owner got to be in planning or design or anything like that.
It would need to be atleast a 4 bd, but as we were wanting to become foster parents before the fire, if we get a home we'd want to continue
Answer
A Habitat for Humanity home is "simple, decent housing".
It's finished inside
It often includes appliances. It definitely includes a heating unit. Depending on the area, it may include cooling.
They do NOT offer packages that furnish the home with furniture.
They only build from certain blueprints, and if it's a four-bedroom home that is needed, there will probably be only one style available.
The house is generally painted a basic white inside. You want colors, you paint it yourself.
No pantries. Generally a dining area, not a dining room. Possibly a utility area somewhere in the house.
No fences for the yard.
No, you don't get a choice of energy source.
They sometimes do green homes.
They do all the prep work for the foundation, etc, and if that includes removing old pipes, that's included.
They generally do not do garages unless the local zoning requires it - it's "we build houses for people, not for cars"! Basements depend on the area as well; up here in the Northeast, everyone has them, so the houses do as well. Down South, the houses are generally built on a concrete slab.
The sweat equity is simply calculated in hours. No, it's not taken off of your mortgage; your mortgage is already lower than market value because of all the volunteer hours put into the home. And generally, it's only the hours the people living in the house put in that will count toward your total. You can't work on a Habitat site till you're 16, so your younger kids won't be able to help. You have to do a portion of your sweat equity before your house is even started, working on the houses of other people, and all of your sweat equity must be done before you get to move into the house. It's part of your "down payment".
There's quite a cost involved in tearing down and getting rid of an old house. You'd have to talk to them about that.
I've never heard of a Habitat affiliate "working with" the Salvation Army to get furniture for a house. That's not to say it isn't done - or that you couldn't work with the SA to make it happen.
As for the requirements of code in an historic district, they may be onerous enough that your Habitat affiliate would not be willing to work with them. To put it bluntly, the extra money they might have to spend to do that could be spent helping another deserving family.
A Habitat for Humanity home is "simple, decent housing".
It's finished inside
It often includes appliances. It definitely includes a heating unit. Depending on the area, it may include cooling.
They do NOT offer packages that furnish the home with furniture.
They only build from certain blueprints, and if it's a four-bedroom home that is needed, there will probably be only one style available.
The house is generally painted a basic white inside. You want colors, you paint it yourself.
No pantries. Generally a dining area, not a dining room. Possibly a utility area somewhere in the house.
No fences for the yard.
No, you don't get a choice of energy source.
They sometimes do green homes.
They do all the prep work for the foundation, etc, and if that includes removing old pipes, that's included.
They generally do not do garages unless the local zoning requires it - it's "we build houses for people, not for cars"! Basements depend on the area as well; up here in the Northeast, everyone has them, so the houses do as well. Down South, the houses are generally built on a concrete slab.
The sweat equity is simply calculated in hours. No, it's not taken off of your mortgage; your mortgage is already lower than market value because of all the volunteer hours put into the home. And generally, it's only the hours the people living in the house put in that will count toward your total. You can't work on a Habitat site till you're 16, so your younger kids won't be able to help. You have to do a portion of your sweat equity before your house is even started, working on the houses of other people, and all of your sweat equity must be done before you get to move into the house. It's part of your "down payment".
There's quite a cost involved in tearing down and getting rid of an old house. You'd have to talk to them about that.
I've never heard of a Habitat affiliate "working with" the Salvation Army to get furniture for a house. That's not to say it isn't done - or that you couldn't work with the SA to make it happen.
As for the requirements of code in an historic district, they may be onerous enough that your Habitat affiliate would not be willing to work with them. To put it bluntly, the extra money they might have to spend to do that could be spent helping another deserving family.
What is your vision for the future of America?
Lleh
I don't mean what do you think is reasonably possible given the present circimstances. I don't mean the names of the leaders who can make it happen. I just want to know what you really want America to be like in the best of all possible (or impossible) futures. What will your kids and grandkids and great great grandkids experience in the best America you can envision?
Answer
What I would want the nation to be and what it is most likely to become are two entirely different things.
It would have been nice if Americans discovered to concentrate their living into compact but livable cities, rather than the sometimes insane urban sprawl. I myself live outside the nearby city, but in a housing development that is surrounded by meadows. Unfortunately, that scene will soon change when the nearby airport expands.
We spread out so much, not to farm or do ranching or such then-localized economic activity. But it is to live apart from where we work. If this country did as a hundred years ago, in this aspect alone, there would be people living near where they work. There also were trams and trolleys in network through some rural areas, so not everyone had to have a horse or car in order to live their lives. But today, mass transit solutions are impossible (or impossibly expensive) because we are not conveniently concentrated.
I would like to see the use of solar cells on every roof, storing up energy (probably in basements or garage batteries or fuel cells) during the day and keeping the home conveniently comfortable at night when we return from work or whatever. While some, though not all, manufacturing processes are terrible polluters, perhaps the alternative, mechanical processes would work (their efficiencies are greater, but need more maintenance considerations) such as mirrors that heat fluids into gases. I would think that telecommuting would be a bigger thing, more people comfortably working from the comfort of home, but with technology keeping them sufficiently connected to keep them from loneliness (or loafing). With robots and automation, a home with a basement or a workshop in the backyard could even be a mini-assembly stage of industry.
Closed-cycle processes need to be employed, not so much as the "green thing to do" but because they are less polluting and more manageable. Electric cars (charged up by my home's own electricity, generated by the sunlight that naturally falls on my roof, currently merely heating my attic and the air around it) could help me get around.
Another thing is the old concept of staged transportation. Air travel is only for long distances where the travel must necessarily be swift (family emergency in a distant city, an engineer needed to fix a unique problem) or for very long distances. Trains were for regional transport of people. Buses were for local transport. Of course, as suggested before, places like work, church, and the grocery should be close enough to walk there.
Finally, I suspect that some common services might need something akin, but not directly, to socialization of medicine and transport. I like capitalism and the freedom it allows. But until we discover on our own the ways to nicely live together we are missing the convenient opportunities to do such common things as provide an inexpensive and unburdening transportation or medical system. We largely do that with education.
Unfortunately, politics and historical baggage make my 'vision' impossible, impractical, or undesireable, even to me. Getting the needed agreement simply won't happen. The ideas have been around a long time, good ideas, but unworkable unless forced upon us -- undesireable if they are forced.
What I would want the nation to be and what it is most likely to become are two entirely different things.
It would have been nice if Americans discovered to concentrate their living into compact but livable cities, rather than the sometimes insane urban sprawl. I myself live outside the nearby city, but in a housing development that is surrounded by meadows. Unfortunately, that scene will soon change when the nearby airport expands.
We spread out so much, not to farm or do ranching or such then-localized economic activity. But it is to live apart from where we work. If this country did as a hundred years ago, in this aspect alone, there would be people living near where they work. There also were trams and trolleys in network through some rural areas, so not everyone had to have a horse or car in order to live their lives. But today, mass transit solutions are impossible (or impossibly expensive) because we are not conveniently concentrated.
I would like to see the use of solar cells on every roof, storing up energy (probably in basements or garage batteries or fuel cells) during the day and keeping the home conveniently comfortable at night when we return from work or whatever. While some, though not all, manufacturing processes are terrible polluters, perhaps the alternative, mechanical processes would work (their efficiencies are greater, but need more maintenance considerations) such as mirrors that heat fluids into gases. I would think that telecommuting would be a bigger thing, more people comfortably working from the comfort of home, but with technology keeping them sufficiently connected to keep them from loneliness (or loafing). With robots and automation, a home with a basement or a workshop in the backyard could even be a mini-assembly stage of industry.
Closed-cycle processes need to be employed, not so much as the "green thing to do" but because they are less polluting and more manageable. Electric cars (charged up by my home's own electricity, generated by the sunlight that naturally falls on my roof, currently merely heating my attic and the air around it) could help me get around.
Another thing is the old concept of staged transportation. Air travel is only for long distances where the travel must necessarily be swift (family emergency in a distant city, an engineer needed to fix a unique problem) or for very long distances. Trains were for regional transport of people. Buses were for local transport. Of course, as suggested before, places like work, church, and the grocery should be close enough to walk there.
Finally, I suspect that some common services might need something akin, but not directly, to socialization of medicine and transport. I like capitalism and the freedom it allows. But until we discover on our own the ways to nicely live together we are missing the convenient opportunities to do such common things as provide an inexpensive and unburdening transportation or medical system. We largely do that with education.
Unfortunately, politics and historical baggage make my 'vision' impossible, impractical, or undesireable, even to me. Getting the needed agreement simply won't happen. The ideas have been around a long time, good ideas, but unworkable unless forced upon us -- undesireable if they are forced.
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Title Post: Does a Habitat for Humanity home come furnished in any way, appliances, etc?
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