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PHOTO BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
mascot Flats tenants accepted a plaque from Habitat for Humanity commemorating the renovation project 30 years ago. at right in front row is ann Rupel and in the middle row center is Don Kao, both original homesteaders from when the building was renovated by Habitat for Humanity in 1984.
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Humanity was at Mascot Flats, people in the neighborhood cleaned up empty lots and planted community gardens there. “Once you build some decent homes that people actually own, it gentrifies every neighborhood,” he said. He noted he has not returned to a former work site where upkeep is an issue. “People are so proud of their own homes that they bought, and worked on for hundreds of hours, and paid for full price to let anybody do any damage to it,” he said. The apartments at Mascot Flats were not given away. As Jimmy Carter stated, Habitat for Humanity only gives away “love and compassion.” He thought the people who first moved in paid $30,000 for an apartment, which they could have turned around and sold for almost six times the price. “We put a restraint on the homes here as they sold, so Habitat would have partial ownership, and could use that money to build more homes,” he said. However, another original tenant, “Doc” Aroyo, recalled that the purchase price for his apartment was $50,000, though the mortgage was interest-free. When asked about the national mortgage crisis, the former president advocated for regulations to control banks. “We do need a very strict law to be passed to prevent that profiting off of innocent borrowers who are given a loan that the bank knows they can’t repay, just
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so the bank can make a profit by reselling the mortgages,” he said. According to him, these protections were partially in place through a law passed a few years ago, but Congress is blocking the law from implementation by withholding funds. “The average person making a loan to buy a house doesn’t have any lobbyist in Washington to protect his or her interests,” he said. “But the rich folks that are benefiting from this, they have lobbyists to protect their interests, and I think this changed dramatically in the last 30 years,” he said. Carter said he also feels there has been a lowering of expectations in the States, and a “stalemate” in social mobility. As for Congress, and its current standstill, he had a few words of advice and a recommendation that its members all go work for a day on a Habitat site, where cooperation is key. “We respect authority, and when we have a building superintendent or house leader, everybody that works on the Habitat site pays attention to instructions for the well-being of everybody,” he stated. “And secondly, there’s no distinction whether you’re Christian, Muslim or Jew, Democrat or Republican, man or a woman — you’re all working for the same goal.” The Carter Project was also in Oakland, San Jose and Denver last week. The rest of the sites include Queens, Staten Island and Union Beach, N.J. There were 1,000 volunteers in New York to renovate and repair 15 homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy last year.
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COREY JOHNSON
Democratic Nominee District 3 City Council WWW.COREY2013.COM October 17, 2013
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