Habitat for Humanity Admits Slow Rebuilding

Maybe they would do a better job if President Jimmy Carter were spending more time building houses and not writing anti-Semitic books that are poorly sourced and plagiarized.

Seriously though, I had held out hope that organizations like Habitat would do a good job in getting houses rebuilt up and down the Gulf Coast because of their expertise in building homes across the country. But to build only 416 homes thus far? That's seemingly inexcuseable, but the situation is more complicated than that:

But almost 18 months after storms destroyed more than 250,000 homes, Habitat for Humanity says it has built just 10 houses for poor hurricane victims here, 36 in New Orleans, and a total of 416 along the entire coast, from Alabama to Texas. More are under construction, for a total of 702.

That slower pace reflects, in part, the more complex houses that Habitat builds in the United States, as well as the mind-numbing issues — involving insurance costs and government regulations — that seem to have bogged down efforts to rebuild after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

But Habitat International is starting to face criticism that its procedures are slow, rigid and perhaps unsuited to helping disaster victims, however rewarding its efforts are for its volunteers. The organization is working through its independent local affiliates, which function like franchises and which have tended to build a dozen houses a year each.

How have other entities fared, including private companies, to provide a baseline for comparison. Well, other groups have done far more with far less:

...volunteers from Southern Baptist churches mucked out 12,000 houses in Mississippi alone, and have rebuilt or repaired 3,000, while volunteers from Mennonite congregations have repaired hundreds of houses and built 31 new ones last year. Even the small Southern Mutual Help Association, a nonprofit that reported revenues of $3.3 million in 2005, has helped rehabilitate or rebuild more than 500.

Habitat has been building homes from scratch, which is a different tact than those other groups. Still, one has to wonder what is the best way for the charity's leadership to utilize the vast resources at Habitat's disposal.