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Habitat for Liberalism?

In doing my morning rounds this morning I notice that there’s an awful lot of traffic on Michelle’s place [1] this morning with regards to Habitat for Humanity.  An example:

The battle has been brewing for some time. A quick Google search shows that the New York Times covered the story in June 2007: [2]

Seven years later, Ms. Zeigler is one of more than 50 Fairway Oaks homeowners who have problems with their houses and say they fear that the blitz construction was shoddy and that their land, adjacent to two former town dumps, is unstable or contaminated.

“My pride is gone,” Ms. Zeigler said, pointing to cracks in her house’s ceiling and its concrete slab foundation. “I’ve got a 25-year mortgage, and I’ve got stuff that needs to be addressed or I’m just paying my mortgage in vain, because I won’t have a house in 25 years because it will be falling apart.”

The Fairway Oaks owners took their complaints to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, and of 56 who answered a survey for Legal Aid, 41 reported cracked concrete slabs, 22 had cracked walls and 48 said their houses were infested with insects or rodents, presumably because of the cracks. Others reported mold or mildew, nails popping out of plasterboard and other problems. The Habitat for Humanity local affiliate, HabiJax, maintains that the land at Fairway Oaks is stable and that most problems there are housekeeping issues, not structural. City inspectors this month examined six houses and found no violations. But in a vulnerable population, the perceptions have a life of their own. A project built with sweat equity and good will has had unintended consequences, and costs.

All Jimmy Carter-bashing and schadenfreude aside, do the residents have a bona fide case or are these professional moochers trying to pin blame on others for their own lack of personal responsibility?

Probably a bit of both. A few of the houses seem to have been clearly uninhabitable. In 2005, the cracks in one foundation reportedly “became so severe that the house had to be lifted and settled on piers. Engineers hired by HabiJax found six feet of debris buried under the soil,” reports the NYT.

But was the entire project tainted?

Note this paragraph in the same NYT article:

In the early 1990s the land held a blighted public housing complex, built on land that had been used, in isolated pockets, as a dump. After complaints by residents, the Environmental Protection Agency tested the soil for contamination. The E.P.A. concluded that the land was safe but noted that two buildings had been demolished because of soil settling, possibly caused by debris decomposing under the soil. A later soil test found elevated levels of arsenic, but the Florida Department of Health determined there was no significant health risk.

Ronnie A. Ferguson, president of the Jacksonville Housing Authority, said the two buildings had been damaged by water runoff, not because of soil instability associated with buried debris.

I’ve watched enough of these “environmental justice” activists [3] to know that they coach their clients to complain about vague ailments (“mysterious skin rashes”) that have no relation in reality to the environmental conditions they claim are the cause. These professional grievance-mongers have blocked countless private redevelopment and remediation projects — and milked tens of millions in settlements — based on bogus scientific and medical claims.

So, we appear to be stuck somewhere between “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, and “No good deed will go unpunished.  ”

It occurs to me, that if the legal crowd, who is so firmly in the pocket of the Democrats, are  going to do that kind of nonsense against Habitat for Humanity which let’s face it, is also in that same pocket, what are they going to do when the government comes along and tries to play charity, as directed by Democrats?  The answer, of course, is pretty much the same thing.  As Michelle says:

In the end, I can’t say I feel too much sympathy for Jimmy Carter and his Hollywood partners. The Left has stoked both eco-zealotry and the entitlement culture with impunity. Perhaps they’ll feel a little less inclined to feed those beasts after getting bitten squarely in the ass.

Now, I tend to doubt that as an outcome.  That would mean actually learning the lesson being taught  by reality.  Carter and company… the left in general…  have always succeeded in avoiding that outcome… being affected by reality,  over the years.  I have no reason to believe that they’re going to be changing.

It should be said that at least part of this is the entitlement mentality.  As someone who has seen the kind of blight brought about by “public housing” I can tell you that that’s at least half the issue here.  That said, as far as I’m concerned the entitlement crowd, and the enviro-whackjob crowd, jolly well deserve each other.

The pity is, that the poor actually get caught in the middle.

One lesson that all that does not appear to be taught to any of the people going into these Habitat for Humanity homes is that there is no such thing as a maintenance free home.  As an example, since we’re talking about Florida here; mildew isn’t exactly an unheard of thing, even absent any problems with the construction. Same thing with roaches.  Sorry about that, but my guess is that they probably came in with the furniture they brought from wherever they were living previously.  Or clothing, or whatever.  I’ve moved enough people to know. And Mildew? You’ve got to fight it where it shows up. That’s simply part of owning a home.

Then, too, there’s the issue of housekeeping.  There again, there is no such thing as a maintenance free home.  You leave food out, roaches mice and God knows what are going to show up, particularly in places like Florida where bugs have a tendency to thrive.  I mean, come on now, do the whiners really expect us to believe that the HFH folks trucked in roaches for each new house they built?  Granted, that I’d tend to think little of such projects, but on the other hand , there’s a difference between stupid and willfully evil people.  Habitat people can be one or the other, it’s doubtful they are both.

This point about maintenance  seems to me of the same type of nonsense as the supposed credit crunch, though.

Think;  What we have here is a number of people that are ill prepared for home ownership. Putting people in the homes that haven’t the foggiest idea about home maintenance, and who are so busy trying to scratch out a living at their meager job that they don’t have the ability or time to maintain their new places, particularly homes that are going to require more maintenance than usual, as these Habitat for Humanity homes often do, strikes me as singularly stupid.

It amounts to, in the end, nothing more than feel-goodism.
And we certainly know where that leads.  Pretty much, where everything  else Jimmy Carter gets his mitts on, leads. Leftie disaster. Habitat for Humanity is no exception to that rule.