With regret, I think that experience over the past 30 years is that sweat equity has been successful in very special circumstances, for a variety of reasons. First, the housing subsidy burden on taxpayers is - overwhelmingly - the homeowner mortgage interest deduction. This federal housing subsidy provides the most benefits to the most well-to-do homeowners (there is an upper limit) who have the most expensive homes (or two). This subsidy is many many times the amount provided for all types of federal housing assistance for low and moderate income people. (Sorry I don't have time to look up the numbers) . Homeownership has many positive impacts upon the community, but owners build equity and get appreciation - PLUS a big subsidy from renters and all taxpayers. Primarily, sweat equity is not a big part of the answer because unskilled and semi-skilled labor is an increasingly smaller part of the cost components of housing. Sweat equity won't affect the cost of land, regulation (inspections to make sure the foundation doesn't crack, etc.), materials (where increases have been huge over the past years), public utilities, foundations, mechanical systems and carpentry requiring high skill and/or heavy equipment. Housing is really a community resource - in the sense that it is there for 50 to 100 years, far longer than the tenure of any occupant, so quality is important to the neighbors and the neighborhood. There are health and safety considerations - do you want to live next to a four-plex that had the gas connected by someone who did it just a little bit wrong? (not enough to catch the eye of an inspector.......) And anyone who has had to live in an apartment with gudged up woodwork from 20 years of bad paint jobs knows that even the seemingly simple tasks, like painting, require skill. Of course it can be learned but the experience of the Urban Homestead program in Minneapolis in the l970's was very mixed - many households who had the time didn't have the money to complete rehabbing the house they got for $1, and those who had the money to pay for even the essential materials were working full time and frequently didn't have the time to finish the job. Sweat equity seems to work best where it is now - individual homeowners who receive the payback (good or bad) for their work in the value of their house when they sell or refinance it. Sweat equity is also - of necessity- a very slow process, not well suited to the dimensions of the housing needs in our community.
Lisa Kugler Tangletown To my knowledge,Habitat is the primary success story - they have a considerable organization to support all of the tasks that are unrelated to unskilled labor: donations and bulk purchase of materials, donated labor and equipment from contractors, low interest funds, already organized teams of workers. California has also seen success with self-help migrant worker housing. Climate also makes a big difference in how complicated the building is - here buildings have to withstand 120 degree temperature shifts, snow loads, etc. The only successful apartment self-help that I am aware of occured in New York in the l970's, called Urban Homesteading, where groups of tenants essentially squatted in abandoned apartment buildings, did some minimal work and then slowly forced the city to take title to the abandoned properties and deed them to the tenant groups, who then completed the rehab using a combination of donated labor and small contractors. Walt Cygan wrote: The third leg of this stool is the taxpayer. If subsidies are provided, someone must be paying for it. Sometimes the burden placed on taxpayers is given very little consideration. Perhaps something like the Habitat for Humanity model can be useful. Money from taxpayers can be used to bankroll projects. "Sweat equity" from potential homeowners or apartment acquirers can be used to make the construction or rehab process less costly and lower mortgages/rents. Part of rent and mortgage payments are returned to the fund for further investment, minimizing ongoing taxpayer burden. Does anyone have experience with a process like this? Can donated labor for these projects and reinvested capital and limited subsidies help create a revolving fund to push projects forward? Can this be managed by a non-governmental entity in an efficient way? Or is something like this already happening and I am just blissfully unaware as a homeowner living in the same place for the last 14 years? Or is this just a fantasy? Walt Cygan Keewaydin _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
