 To At The Crossroads, I am your host, Keisha King, and today I'm here on a Monday. Can you imagine that? I'm going to start being here on Mondays, where I can give you more at four, so please remember to tune in. You can always catch me on Think Tech Hawaii on our Facebook page, and after the show, you can catch me on YouTube every week, every other week. I'm going to have to get used to saying all this. Every other week on Mondays, usually the show is up in 24 hours, so please be sure to tune in. We're always going to give you conversations that are real and relevant, relevant to our community right here in the lovely Rainbow State of Hawaii in downtown Honolulu. We are going to be sharing with you today opportunities for home ownership and how you, the average Joe, can become a builder, construction worker, or just a roundabout volunteer with an organization that I have actually given to in the past. And I love to do it, because sometimes you get to use a power tool. There's a little bit of demolition involved. It is going to be with habitat for humanity. And today's guest is no stranger to all this fun. It is Jim Murphy, the Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity. Aloha Jim, and welcome to At the Crossroads. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. No problem, it's totally my pleasure. So tell me, what exactly for those who don't know is Habitat for Humanity? We are an affordable housing program. Our organization is focused on building affordable housing for families, or making repairs to existing houses to help folks stay in their house, improve the value and the safety of that home. I see. I had my experience, or several experiences, probably dating back to the 19, well let's just stop right there because that's too long ago. But I had my experience with Habitat for Humanity the first time we were rehabilitating someone's home and making it accessible for a wheelchair. And so you kind of get involved in that way as well, right? Oh absolutely, I mean that's our mission in action. When we have volunteers come out to our build sites, they're there with the family that are going to be living in the home who are already living there. So they're getting to know our mission, the family, and building that Aloha with them. And I can go out and talk pretty all day long about what we do, but until you're out at the build site and experience that, that's when it really brings it home. That's exactly right. And currently you have a program I think that goes until tomorrow. It's Home is Key. What's that? So it's a national program that Habitat launched in April of this year. And it's really about focusing our mission and getting people to understand that it's not just about the house, it's about the community that builds that house. And that home is a key to so much more than just housing. It's a whole, it's a key to opportunity. It's a key to better health, better education for your children. A key for the community to come together and improve itself and a key to develop the neighborhoods. So what we're trying to express to everyone is it's we're not just building a house, we're bringing that community together to build that house. Exactly. So we have, I'm not sure if we've shown the picture already where the home is key, our first picture, but moving on to our second picture, I was able to help and I'm just an average Joe. As we can see in our pictures right here, we have people come out to a build site. And what is that like? Because of course you could tell I have no experience building a home. Yeah. And 90% of the people that come out to our build sites have no experience. They don't know which end of the hammer to hold. They don't know how to use power tools. And that's really a huge part of our mission, is getting people who don't have those skills and teaching them those skills. We work really hard. We have over 3,000 volunteers in our database that we can call on to come out and build with us. And we want to get them involved. We want to get them to learn some skills, whether it's painting, whether it's carpentry. You know, we get guys who come out and they only want to come out when it's time to get it, you know, put a harness on and go on the roof. But it's really about getting people out there who don't know each other. Because at the beginning of that day, they walk on to that build site and they're complete strangers. And at the end of the day, they're one Ohana, them, the volunteers, and the family. We get a lot of businesses that come out. The picture that you showed earlier was Joe Uno Associates. They came out last Saturday and built with us. So we get a lot of businesses who come out. It's a team building exercise for them, an opportunity for them to come out. And sometimes they've got some skills or their staff have some skills, which is great. But it's a great team building exercise for them. And it's a great way for them to express their commitment to the community as well. Right. So volunteers come out. And do they need to go through a process before they actually get to a build site? For example, I'm thinking about safety. And as you mentioned skill set might not be necessary. You obviously have professionals that are there to teach them, right? But how do you help with the safety for everyone involved? They definitely have to sign a waiver. Okay. We've got a very talented construction crew that have all the tools, all of the talent. We've got a full-time construction manager, two site supervisors, an intern, and three AmeriCorps staff who are really there to lead the volunteers through their build day. And they're hyper-organized. They know exactly what tools, exactly what skills they're going to be doing, exactly what they need to do on any given day. So if you've got 15 to 20 volunteers who show up, they know that I need five people to go and cut lumber. I need three people to paint. We're going to be laying some flooring down. And they have a show of hands who wants to help do this, who wants to help do this. Everybody breaks out. There's supervision and they get the work done. And so it's really, really organized. It's really because, I mean, the key is safety. We want to make sure that everybody stays safe. We want to make sure that everybody has a very engaging experience out there. We want to encourage everyone to spend some time and talk story with the family and the staff and learn about the mission and ask us how it works and ask us about, you know, maybe they've got somebody. We had somebody just last week who came out and volunteered because he just wanted to help out and the more he talked about it, realized I might qualify for this program. And so he's now looking at the program to see if he might qualify for his family. So in our next group of pictures or our next one picture, there's a process that people have to go through in order to qualify. Yeah. All right. So let's take a look at this slide and let people know what this entails and how long does it take? So this is our pathway to home ownership. And this used to be a very complicated spreadsheet with lots of tabs and nobody understood. It's certainly not the families. It's a very, very daunting idea to step in and have the audacity to say, I want to own a home because there's lots of paperwork. There's credit checks. There's tax returns. There's just a lot of information that needs to be provided in order for a family to qualify for our programs. And so we created this display, this sort of show that the pathway from the day you walk in the door and say, I'd like to apply from your program to the day that I am standing on your doorstep handing you a key to the house is doable. It's absolutely doable. We are with the families every step of the way from the pre-application stage where we're sort of assessing like, does it make sense to even go through the process of the application? And if it's not, we take a step back and say, maybe take a look at your credit score. Let's take a look at some other opportunities that might be there. It may not be now. It may be in a year or so, but let's fix some things before we come back to this. Then the application process where we're getting all of the paperwork and doing all the crunching, all the numbers and our family selection committee, which is a volunteer group that yet to know the family and how they're currently living and what their situation is. And then we take that to the board and the board approves it. And then we get into the sweat equity piece, which is where the families will come out and provide some volunteer time and get to know us. We call them partner families for a reason because we really are developing a partnership. And then once we've developed those initial 50 hours of sweat equity, it's time to start planning a house. And then we start planning the house and we go through the permit process just like every other contractor in Honolulu. I say that in the same line that everybody else does. Oh, it is. But then we bring our cadre of 3,000 volunteers out to help build this house. Takes about eight months to build the house. And then we stand there on the doorstep and I cry in public and hand people keys to their house. Yeah, so. That's the sweet part, but you've mentioned some real numbers already, right? 50 hours worth of sweat equity, 3,000 volunteers to build a house. That process from completing the application to getting the key was eight months to build the house. Everything that happens before you actually break ground. How long is that? It can take about a year and a half, maybe two years, depending on the situation. There are three core tenets to being a partner family. One is you have to be financially stable because the family does have a mortgage back to us. Now it's zero interest mortgage. So if it costs me $200,000 to build that house, that's what the family pays back to us. And we hold the mortgage for the family because we want to make sure that if we want to get them into stable housing and keep them into stable housing. So they have to be financially stable enough to repay that mortgage back to us. They have to have a need. So it oftentimes our families are either living in a very expensive rental unit and they are one medical bill, one job loss, one adverse situation, having to make a decision that they have to leave that unit. Oftentimes they're living with family in an overcrowded situation. So they have to demonstrate a need for housing. It can't simply be, I'm sick of my house. Can you build me a new house? Right. And the third is their willingness to partner. And that's a really important piece. They have to be out working with us, working with our volunteers every Saturday that we're building, doing those sweat equity hours because they're only paying $1,000 down payment. So their sweat equity is really their down payment. Right. And that's really important because part of our mission is sharing that partner family with the community. So we want the families to be there getting to know the volunteers, talking about their lives and their journey and their struggle to get to this point. And they start to get very excited as we're building the house. Of course. So those are the three things that are most important. And then when we're done, we actually ask for an additional 25 hours from the families, mostly because we want to make sure that we maintain that partnership. And then honestly, they're the best advocates for this work. So being able to get a partner family to write a thank you letter to donors. I mean that means more to the donor than a letter from me ever will. So it's definitely a partnership that lasts the lifetime. Wow. Yeah. So I love it, right? I've already shared. I had the opportunity to help someone. I know what it looks... I know what the faces of the new homeowners or rehabilitated home owners, I know what those faces look like. What we'll touch on when we come back though, I want to hear some stories about homeowners and volunteers. How good does it feel to be a volunteer, to know that you are changing someone's life, right? I know you've heard some stories about that. And when we come back, we're about to take our commercial break right now, but when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more with Jim about Habitat for Humanity and the differences they are making in the lives of our friends and family right here. It's happening right here. So it's not something that's restricted to the mainland. This is an international, national organization. So it's happening all over and maybe even in your backyard, literally. We'll be right back at the crossroads after this. Aloha and mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay, and aloha. Hey, aloha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii, airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, aloha. Aloha again and welcome back to At the Crossroads. We are talking today with my very special guest, Jim Murphy with Habitat for Humanity. He's the executive director and he's been spending a little bit of time with us today to talk about home ownership, ohana, family homes, giving back to the community. I love, love, love it. So tell us about the volunteers that get involved. Yeah, so I always say I got 99 problems, but finding volunteers is not one of them. Okay, that's awesome. And I think a lot of it has to do, A, our build day is incredibly engaging and it's just a wonderful, wonderful experience. So I think it's something that people want to do. I also think it's part of the aloha spirit here. I think it's taught in schools. I think it's taught in just the lifestyle here. You get, you know, we're building three houses right now in Waimanalo. And so we get people from Waimanalo just coming down the street on a Saturday to help out where they can. So, and the volunteers come, they're, you know, like I mentioned earlier, some of them have skills, some of them don't have skills. Some of them will find out like, you know, oh, can you tell me when you're doing flooring because I really want to come out and do flooring or, you know, or, you know, I've got a bad back. So I really want to, you know, just I don't want to do some painting or little things like that. Then the most wonderful thing about it though is when we are done with the house, before we dedicate the house, we invite all of the volunteers back because you get a lot of volunteers who, they were out there digging foundation. And so they didn't really get to see a house. And so we let the volunteers come in and have a big celebration for them because they are really the ones that made this house happen. They're really the ones that created this house. And then I always tell them, you'll be able to drive down the street for the, you know, the rest of your life and point at that house and say, I helped build that house. Right? Isn't that such a good feeling too, right? Because everybody loves doing something that that feel good emotion. You want to have that, right? And so when you are able to have that pride of ownership for a house you may never live in. And like you said, you drive by and you're like, I helped. I was a part of that. Yeah. That's a good feeling. Yeah. And I always say like I, when I'm having a bad day, when I'm mired in a spreadsheet or a grant report or something, I will remind myself of the day that I stood in, you know, Kanye O'Aye and handed the keys to Ms. Puccino for her house or Waipahu and handed the keys to the Tacanos for their, for their new home. And that makes it all worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have a great job. I do have a, I can't complain about my day job. I can't complain about my day job. Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. It's an incredible outpouring of aloha that just comes in, not only from the community, but also from the families themselves. And you can see it. I mean, their journey to become homeowners started long before they knocked on our door and said they wanted to try this. They thought about it. They dreamt about it. They cried about it. They prayed about it. They wondered if it was ever possible. And then they, then they took that leap and said, I'm going to give this a go. And so by the time that we get to that day, I mean, it is such, it's, it just changes their life. I mean, it absolutely changes their life and it changes ours too. Yeah. Lives are forever changed because of habitat for humanity. Yeah. So home ownership is possible. Yes. You know, I was just watching a councilwoman, Kimberly Pine on the news the other day, and she was talking about monster houses. So I'm sure you have rules and regulations about what homeowners can and cannot do after you all help them build the homeless. I don't want to see a seven story house that I started out helping to build. That was one story, three bedroom, right? Yeah. No, we're, and we're building specifically to the family size. So if you are a family of four, let's say you've got a boy and a girl. So you're getting a three bedroom, you're getting a three bedroom house. So we're building specifically for that size and for that affordability. The houses that we build are about 40% below the market rate. And when then you add in a 0% interest, the family's paying about 25% of what they would pay to not only build the house, but then have a traditional mortgage. And it's not, it's not something that you'll find anywhere else. And it doesn't always have to be us as the lender. We work with USDA or VA loans and other arms that may be more affordable for the families as well. Wow. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. That's really good. So about how many homes do you build in a year? This year, we've already completed three this year. We've got three under construction right now and I'm hoping to go in for permit for two more and get those started before 2019. So that's about eight. We are definitely ramping up and we've committed ourselves to building 40 houses in the next five years. Wow. There's a lot of opportunity there. There's a lot of, certainly there's a lot of need for families. There's a lot of opportunity to collaborate with the state and the city for the availability of land for funding. And like I mentioned, we just got a ton of volunteers. But right now we've got three houses going at the same time and we have this just last Saturday, we had three different volunteer groups working on three houses at the same time. I love it, love it, love it. Yeah. I want to touch on that in a minute but I want to go back to something you said about working with the city and getting permits and things like that. It sounds as if they don't give you any special preferences. Is there any funding that they give you? We qualify for some money through HUD, GIA money, and the city has, it's traditional, they have housing funds that we can apply for our programs. It's certainly, it's a grant. So we have to go through that process. The state has parcels of land that they can allocate to us. And then we go find a family and then they'll have a land lease with the family. We were very closely with the Department of Hawaiian Homelands as they're developing new subdivisions for the native Hawaiian community and working with them to put housing in. So it's a lot of collaboration between us and the state and the city. But they are, they have definitely recognized that there's great opportunity in that collaboration. And if we collaborate and work together, we can put a lot of families in homes. I love it, love it, love it. Well, we have a few minutes left. I want to talk about how people can get involved because it sounds like you currently have six houses right now under construction. Three under construction and two more plans. So, yes, yeah. All right. But there's plenty of opportunity. I want to get my hands dirty. Yes, there's plenty of opportunity for you to get involved as well as I want to. I will do it. You heard it here. I will do it. I will get involved. I will put on some gloves, of course. And they'll probably be pretty with flowers. That's okay. Hearts. That's okay. Okay. But if I can do that. We don't judge. We don't judge. They may not be pretty by the time you leave the build site, but starting out, they'll be pretty. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, go to our website and there's a place that just says, literally, it says, Get Involved. And it's how you can just sign up, register, become a volunteer. There's a calendar that shows, you know, here's what we're doing this Saturday or maybe you're not available until later in May and you can look at that Saturday and you just sign up for that day. And then we've got a volunteer coordinator who will be in touch. Make sure you've signed your waiver. Yeah. And make sure. And then we also make sure that you know exactly what you're going to be doing that day. So if you signed up that day and you find out that they're going to be, you know, putting the trusses up or doing a lot of roofing, you're like, you know, I really just wanted to paint the lanai because these gloves are not, these gloves are not climbing gloves. They're not, right. I was going to say, they're not conducive to roofing. Yeah. So we don't ask anyone, whether it's a volunteer or a family member, to do anything that they're not comfortable doing because we build houses for a lot of older folks too. Right. And so we're not putting a capuna on the roof. We're not, you know, we're not endangering anybody. Plenty of guys out there that want to climb on the roof. Yeah. So we make sure through our communication with the volunteers that they know this is what we're going to be doing that day. If that's not for you, let's find out what's for you and get you scheduled maybe a little bit further down the road. Okay. Yeah. So all those things are possible. That people can get involved by going to your website, which is Honolulu habitat.org. Honolulu habitat.org. Honolulu habitat.org. And then click on Get Involved. Get involved. All right. So we're going to do that. You'll see me there because I want to take a picture. Okay. Because I need proof. And you'll like us on Facebook. I will definitely. Yes. I will like you on Facebook where you are Honolulu habitat. Yep. Okay. Perfect. So I will do that. Okay. And I will try and recruit some people too to come on out because it's fun. And it seems like it's going to be a good thing. You're building eight homes. So this is not a solution to homelessness. No. Not at all. Not at all. We are one of these solutions to the affordable housing issues that face a wide one. Right. Right. Yeah. And let's not even begin to get into that conversation. But it is good to know. I mean $4,000 down and lots and lots of sweat $1,000 down. $1,000. Let's be clear. $1,000 down and lots of sweat equity. Yeah. A person can realize their dreams of home ownership. Through the qualifications and lots of paperwork and all that good stuff. So it's important to remember that. Where does all of this the materials come from? So I mean we buy our materials just like everybody else. Oh wow. We ask for some consideration on pricing. We certainly will take donated materials and donated labor if we can get it from from certain groups. Because we don't do our own electrical and we don't do our own plumbing because those aren't good volunteer. But like discount windows and doors donates every window that goes into our house. Oh what a nice company. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean so we certainly ask for donations where we can get them. Sometimes we'll get flooring donated for this house from one company. Next house we'll they'll donate the flooring for this house. Or maybe we'll they'll donate this you know the flooring for this house. And then we'll buy a couple of houses. So we sort of spread that cost out a little bit. Right. Love it. Love it. So there's a lot of collaboration going on between business business to business. And then your average Joe or Joetta. Yeah yeah. There's I mean there there is an opportunity for everyone on Oahu to participate in our programs in some way. And if they can't figure out if somebody can't find it I will find it for them. All right. You're good to hear. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Jim how did you get involved? I you know I moved here from Chicago six years ago. I had a little bit of construction background. I had always wanted to be an executive director and I'd always had a passion for what Habitat did and there was an opening and I jumped at it. Okay. Wonderful. It's been it'll be five years in August. Five years in August. Love it. You know who inspired me was former president Jimmy Carter. Yep. And I just thought this guy right. Yeah. President of the greatest nation in all the free world. Yeah. And he's out there building homes. And still is. I mean he he I think he's in his 90s and they are doing the Jimmy and Rosalind Carter build in Nashville, Tennessee in September. So I mean he still does it. He still does it. Love it. Yeah. Well thank you so much for being on. Thank you for sharing and for doing what you're doing for our community at large. Especially the homeowners. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great thing. We want to make sure that everyone knows they can go to Honolulu habitat.org. Right. Yep. Press get involved and do just that. Get involved. I'm going to do it. Jim's already doing it. Former president Jimmy Carter is doing it. I think he does it based upon his faith. Right. Yeah. He has a lot to do. Yeah. So just an amazing amazing thing. And it helps with affordable housing. So as always we like to say here at the Crossroads we have conversations that are real and relevant. We are always positive in uplifting and this is one of those feel good stories that I want you to talk about and then do something about it like get involved. You've been here with me at the Crossroads. I'm your host Keisha King and I'll see you every other Monday at four where I could give you more at four on Mondays. I want to try to remember that. Until next time I'll see you at the Crossroads. Loja.