Each year, IVHFH seeks an influential woman in the community to honor with the Women Build. The honoree works with a committee of women to raise $55,000 in local donations and recruit volunteers to help a local family build an affordable home and to help an existing homeowner make affordable repairs or accessibility modifications to their home. Along with the efforts of the Women Build committee, a local family will partner with IVHFH to build an energy-efficient home that they will purchase with an affordable home mortgage. The Habitat homeownership program ensures that the household pays no more than 30% of their income to cover housing costs allowing more of their funds to be dedicated toward other essentials like education, health and transportation. Additionally, Women Build will support a local resident in need of critical home repairs and/or accessibility modifications. Through Helping Hands, a homeowner will receive affordable repairs so they can live more safely in their existing home. Jane and the Women Build committee encourage everyone, regardless of gender, to take part in any way they can. We need supporters to swing a hammer on the construction site, provide food for volunteers, make in kind donations or financial donations and attend fundraising events.
Consider a donation today to help IVHFH reach its $3,500 fundraising goal for this project. With your support, we can help make housing safe for more homeowners in our community.
Legislative Bill Attempting to Protect Owners of Mobile and Manufactured Fails in Sub-Committee3/4/2020
Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity believes safe, decent, and affordable is transformational, so a sense of melancholy fell over the entire organization when, amid pleas for help from residents of manufactured housing parks, a bill that would offer basic protections to our fellow community members failed in sub-committee last month. The protections in the bill were reasonable as they would require owners of manufactured home parks to provide 180 days notice prior to raising lot rents, justify lot rent increases greater than inflation, and protect tenants from arbitrary evictions. Its aim, to give residents of manufactured housing the same protections as tenants in more traditional housing, was modest. More tangibly, it would prevent scenes like this. That the bill did not even get a hearing is perplexing. Legislators went to great lengths to receive input from all stakeholders that would be directly impacted by the bill, including residents and owners of manufactured housing parks. Further yet, support for the bill was not split along party lines as 15 Republican Senators joined 15 Democratic Senators in co-sponsoring the bill.
While this development is discouraging, we don’t feel a sense of defeat. There is strong support for key components of the bill, and some of those components may be taken up for consideration later in the 2020 legislative term. For now, however, there are leaders in our community who continue to advocate for just housing laws for manufactured housing residents. IVHFH staff supports their efforts and encourage you to read up on the issues surrounding manufactured housing, starting with the links below. We also urge you to support the efforts led by the Johnson County Affordable Housing Coalition and Johnson County Manufactured Housing Task Force. If you are interested in obtaining more information or joining one of these groups, contact Sara Barron at sara@jcaffordablehousing.org Learn more about the proposed bill and the crisis many manufactured housing residents are facing: Johnson County Mobile Home Task Force Report Des Moines Register: "'The scale was unprecendented': Iowa legislators seek to bolster righst of mobile home park residents" Iowa City Press Citizen: "North Liberty mobile home residents worry about 58 percent rent increase" |
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