Unintended Consequences

You know things aren’t going well in this country when a self-help organization tries to turn a good deed and the good deed creates an unintended negative consequence. In this particular case, recipients of Habitat for Humanity (HfH) houses in Northern Virginia are finding out that home ownership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The problem has nothing to do with the houses per se. This isn’t a scandalous tale of shoddy workmanship or the use of substandard materials. This also has nothing to do with hassles between the home owners and the group that holds the mortgage, HfH.

No, this concerns the all-too-familiar problem of property appreciation. It seems that property tax rates are going through the roof in Northern Virginia. As the rates climb, HfH homeowners are discovering that their property tax bills are exceeding the monthly house payment. Many are worried that property taxes may soon force them from their homes.

For me, this underscores one of the problems I have with organizations like HfH. Groups like this become so focused on one narrow concept – in this case, home ownership one person at a time – that they fail to see the big picture. And one of the recurring problems with a myopic view of the world is that good intentions often lead to these dreaded unintended consequences.

A few years back, my wife & I were very active in our local HfH. The organization is a good one that stresses self-empowerment through sweat equity. However, one aspect of HfH that began to gnaw at me was the fact that HfH didn’t seem interested at all in lobbying government for solutions that might alleviate the housing shortage.

I sat down one day and wrote a letter on this issue to the founder and president of Habit for Humanity International (his name escapes me now). Surprisingly enough, he responded, though not in the way I would have liked. In essence, he said that the task for finding solutions was better left to others. Habitat would stick to its singular mission.

And it’s this singular mission that is now having a most negative impact on the folks in Northern Virginia.

Maybe this situation will help to open a few eyes at HfH. Think again, maybe it won’t.