Millard Fuller and housing the homeless
Millard Fuller was a lawyer, a businessman, and a self-made millionaire by the time he was 29 years of age. But it wasn’t enough for him. In 1965 his wife and he visited the Koinonia Farm in rural Sumter County, Georgia. There Fuller met the farm’s founder, Clarence Jordan. Impressed, Fuller decided to give up his wealth and dedicated his life to service to others, a decision supported by his wife, Linda. Fuller and Jordan developed a model system through which houses would be built for the poor using volunteer, unpaid labor and as much as possible, donated materials.
In 1973 Fuller moved to Zaire, where he tested the model in that emerging African nation. Fuller found that although some materials were donated and many recycled, not all were and there were still costs involved in building the houses, including the price of the land. Fuller revised the model to sell the house for no more than the costs, without interest, and the recovered costs would be used to purchase additional land and materials for new houses. In 1976 he returned to the United States and Koinonia Farm. There the new model was introduced as Funds for Humanity.
Soon it was changed to Habitat for Humanity, building its first houses in San Antonio, Texas, and quickly spreading throughout the United States. San Antonio endorsed the idea as a means of converting the city’s burgeoning slum neighborhoods into clean, livable areas where increased home ownership meant increased pride in the home and the area. The San Antonio experiment was studied by community leaders from across the country, particularly the poor areas of Appalachia. By 1981 Fuller had started or helped start Habitat for Humanity groups in 14 states.
His work starting more organizations internationally and domestically achieved a huge boost when he recruited the former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, to endorse Habitat for Humanity. Fuller had hoped to use Carter simply as a spokesman for the program, but the former President went in wholeheartedly, working on construction sites alongside other volunteers. Carter initiated the Jimmy Carter Work Project. This week long annual event has focused on construction of a home in one week, simultaneously at sites in the United States and internationally.
After Carter became involved, which also included significant financial donations from his own pocket, Habitat for Humanity became a focus of charitable donations from construction and hardware suppliers, plumbing companies, and the manufacturers of appliances, paints, carpets, windows, and more. By 2013 Habitat for Humanity had built more than 800,000 homes around the world, sheltering more than one million people in 92 countries. Millard Fuller was fired from the Habitat for Humanity board in 2005 for inappropriate sexual conduct, but a subsequent investigation cleared him of all charges. He died in 2009.