Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville

Habitat Film

An outgrowth of our New Paradigm for Affordable Housing, Project 20 is our commitment to build at least 20 homes annually in partnership with hard-working local families.

Since 1991, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville has partnered with more than 170 hard-working low income families in the area to help them realize their dream of home ownership.

Habitat doesn’t give away houses, but instead offers Partner Families the opportunity to earn “sweat equity” building their homes and those of their neighbors. Utilizing volunteer labor and donations, Habitat is able to sell homes to Partner Families at no profit with a zero interest mortgage. In turn, Partner Family mortgage payments feed the Fund for Humanity, allowing us to build even more homes.

This approach has made a big difference in the lives of many hard-working Partner Families. But, given the extent of the local affordable housing crisis, we need to think bigger.

Our New Paradigm, a powerful approach to this crisis, has allowed us to build more homes, to a higher standard, on less land.  This new model is creating stable, mixed-income communities.

The stages of the New Paradigm include

• Paton Street, the first Habitat for Humanity mixed income community in Virginia;
• Sunrise, the nation’s first ever trailer park transformation without resident displacement; and,
• Southwood, the area’s greatest remaining opportunity to eradicate local housing poverty.

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