Daley Travels

When Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity in 1976 he was hardly aware of climate change, global warming, and carbon footprints. He simply saw a need for simple, decent, affordable housing for the world's poverty stricken.

But lets face it, poverty is pretty hard on the planet. A cheap beater car for getting to work is probably an old, heavy gas-guzzling monster.  The valves are shot, the piston rings are worn and more oil is being burned off and poured into the air than Arnold's Hummer.

The houses are an environmentalist nightmare.  The estimate on a leaky faucet is over 200 gallons wasted a month. That's just one, chances are the bathtub faucet has some serious dripping issues as well.  About that carbon footprint, bigfoot couldn't deal a bigger mark than those thin un-insulated walls. On a cold stormy winter night, you can not keep a candle lit on account of the breeze slipping past the old window frames, rotted and falling apart. Sure, sound financial logic says that over a period of time it is more cost effective to fix this house than pay out the high energy costs wasted. But that requires making your children miss several meals this month, if they even have that flexibility.

Habitat is not in the business of fixing those old cars, but those classic simple, decent, affordable homes are making a huge impact on lives and the environment.

I was in Hungary earlier this month and helped build some of these homes. These are well built, very eco-friendly houses. I saw exterior walls wrapped in 3 inches of foam core panels, with wood framed walls insulated on top of that.  Plenty of fiberglass insulation on the ceiling as well. I know this for a fact, my arms were itching for days.

 With the double-paned vinyl framed windows, I bet you could heat this place with a match.

It is unfortunate that the current economic downturn has caused the Hungarian government to drop a mortgage program that was helping HFH partner with low income families  to build more of these types of homes.  They are now looking at adapting and changing the focus to re-hab work on multi-dwelling housing that looks to be just as helpful, and just as green.

An example given our team over our farewell dinner shows this potential. A lady called the office and asked if some Habitat members could help her with some re-painting of her window sill.  Years of differed maintenance, and probably poor soviet era workmanship had taken it toll on that poor window.  They couldn't re-paint it, there was not enough solid wood to hold even a layer more paint.  Instead they helped her get an new energy efficient window installed to replace it.  Immediately this lady was seeing a 20 to 25 percent savings in her energy bill each month. They helped her, they helped reduce the demand for more energy by this simple fix.

So if you've been one that wanted to help end poverty housing and help save the planet, now you can do both.

Update on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 3:43PM by Pam Daley

After posting this I have since run across a couple of other main stream media articles.

Habitat for Humanity goes green

Home Depot and Habitat for Humanity back Green building.