Community Corner
Detroit Habitat Lays Off Workers, Closes 2 ReStore Locations
Reduced revenues at resale stores, mortgage delinquencies by partner families, loss of corporate, government funding hit nonprofit hard.
DETROIT, MI — If this isn’t a slap of cruel irony: Detroit Habitat for Humanity, which marshaled an army of volunteers to renovate houses for low-income residents, is broke. The organization said Tuesday it is laying off most of its employees and closing its two ReStore locations while it sorts out myriad financial issues in a “strategic restructuring.
What that means, or how many employees are affected, isn’t exactly clear. Detroit Habitat for Humanity Executive director Ken Cockrel Jr. said in a statement that the nonprofit agency has been dogged by financial issues, including a mortgage delinquency rate of more than 40 percent among homeowners it has assisted. A large number of Habitat homes have been abandoned, according to the statement.
Cockrel, who took over as executive director last year, said he agency has seen increases in ReStore revenue and decreases in the mortgage delinquency rate, “Habitat Detroit has also been hit hard by the loss of government funding and a decline in corporate sponsorships,” he said in the statement. “As a result, the organization has had to take a long hard look at the current business model.”
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Detroit Habitat for Humanity is an affiliate of the global program that traces its roots to Georgia in 1973. Though former President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are famously associated with the organization’s success, the concept of nonprofit to build or renovate houses in partnership with the people who would eventually occupy them came about in conversations between farmer and biblical scholar Clarence Jordan and eventual Habitat founders, Millard and Linda Fuller.
The Detroit affiliate hopes to increase staffing levels by early spring. It also plans to open a new ReStore at a yet-to-be determined location. The resale stores that were shuttered are on Mack Avenue near Cadieux and Greenfield at Interstate 96.
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Habitat Detroit, now in its 31st year, bought its first three houses for a buck apiece in 1986.
Photo by tmaull via Flickr Commons
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