Habitat for Humanity of St Micheles first community will consist of 14 single family homes on a roughly three acre site that has a number of large mango and avocado trees. We purchased the site, and started building the first three homes in December 2009. The home design will be a three room concrete block home with a tin roof. The home will be 540 square feet, and will include a four foot wide front porch. Each room is 12 by 15 feet. The exterior will be stucco and paint. The windows will be ventilated concrete block, and there will be no interior plumbing. The homes will be prewired for a light bulb and switch in each room and on the porch, in case we electrify the community in the future. For bathrooms, we will build three common outhouse buildings on the site. Each of the 14 families will have a private bathroom in one of the outhouse buildings.
We will construct a well on the site so that the families can have access to clean water. We will test the water quarterly to insure that it remains up to standards.
Each home will include a plot of land that each family owns, and will be able to farm. All of the fruit trees on the site will be owned cooperatively by all of the families on the site. There will be a childrens playground on the site, in a shaded area.
The construction cost of each home is estimated at $6000 USD. Although Haiti is a Third World country, the cement and steel is expensive there, as it is world-wide. The land and development (outhouses and a well) will be roughly $800 per home, for a total of $6800. We will sell the homes for $2500 each, payable over 10 years at $250 per year. That is the most that folks in the area can afford to pay. There is no mortgage system in Haiti, but we will have an agreement for deed with each family.
The commitment from Living Hope is that all monies donated to the effort will go towards building materials. The small overhead that is needed to conduct the family selection, training, monitoring and community management will be paid for by Living Hope.
The Habitat Homes project has been made possible by the generous support of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Miami, Inc.
We thank them for their generosity and wise counsel.
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