Tres Rio Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building homes for people who can’t afford one, is having trouble finding a qualified prospective homeowner in San Juan County.
“Normally when we open it, we get just flashed with (applications),” Executive Director Hope Tyler told KOB in a Feb. 9 story. “And we did again this year, however, for whatever reasons we were not able to find a qualified candidate.”
A candidate normally is selected in November or early December, but Tyler said in the article they will keep applications open for as long as it takes to find the right person. Candidates must prove they have lived in San Juan County for a minimum of one year.
“We want you to be a real community member,” Tyler told KOB. “You do have to be able to show that your current housing is somehow unsafe or unsanitary or overcrowded. We had a couple that (had) overcrowding issues, like a family of four or five people living in one room.”
According to the article, the candidate also must be able to afford a $600 to $800 no-interest mortgage, which could be difficult given today’s economy.
“I think that is one of the contributing factors of not having found a family yet,” Tyler said. “With inflation everyone’s expenses are up. When they give us their budgets, it’s harder to say, ‘You’re already super overextended. We can’t really put you in a house that is going to make it worse for you. We want you to be successful'.”
One reason the organization chose San Juan County to build its 15th home is that it’s a low-income area, KOB reported.
“There was an article in USA Today that basically listed Farmington as one of the poorest communities per capita, that means per size, and there are a lot of people that don’t own their own homes,” Tyler told KOB.
This year’s home will be built in Aztec, Tyler said in the article, and if a new homeowner is found soon they could start construction in April.
Tres Rios is a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry on a mission to rid poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.