(08-16-2022, 08:10 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(08-16-2022, 07:53 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: I used to work at Habitat for Humanity in Jacksonville. I wondered for some time why houses were being built in the very neighborhoods the homebuyers, nine out of ten being black, were already living in. Why would they want to live in the areas they were trying to get out of?

#1 reason was they couldn't afford to buy even a Habitat home in other parts of Jacksonville. An interest free mortgage loan is great but it doesn't cover the yearly cost of property tax and other such costs. Homebuyers are educated on every aspect of buying and owning a house so these extra costs are considered in the qualification process.

Sometimes stuff has exactly nothing to do with racism. Go figure.

Jacksonville and Miami both have black neighborhoods that are so large, so poor, and with so few other-race people living in them, that there is no easy solution in the short term.  These neighborhoods are obviously relics of massive amounts of past racism, so, Habijax's decisions certainly have something to do with racism, even though Habijax themselves are innocent.

I volunteered for Habijax most saturdays in 2001 and 2002.  We may have seen each other there.

I volunteered a couple weeks a year for Habijax as well thru the early 2000s. Even met former POTUS Jimmy Carter one time. To his credit, it wasnt just a photo op for him and Rosalyn; they both worked a full day. As it was explained to me by a number of field superintendents in charge of the construction, most of the material, expertise, and even the land was donated by local and national builders, in exchange for tax deductions and positive publicity. In most cases, they would buy the cheap land tracts in more run down areas because....it was cheap. They certainly were not giving away thier prime developable land so that stock 1000 sf residences could be built. The hope was that one or more new homes in a poor area might help boost real estate values there and stimulate more building and renovation, but usually the opposite occured. Sadly, the Habijax homes eventually got as grungy and run down as the area surrounding them.

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