By Nathan Thompson
Executive Director
North St. Louis County Habitat for Humanity is often mistaken for a government agency. After all, St. Louis County is in our name! We must be a division of the county government, right?
I often find myself explaining that we are an ecumenical Christian housing ministry. As such, we are a faith-based organization (but we are not a church). Our mission principles are fivefold:
- Demonstrate the love of Jesus.
- Focus on shelter.
- Advocate for affordable housing.
- Promote dignity and hope.
- Support sustainable and transformational development.
As a faith-based organization, we seek to put God’s love in action to help our neighbors in need of shelter. We gather the community to help us accomplish our mission and we work to advocate for affordable housing at every level of government so that our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live may one day come to be a reality.
The expression “What would Jesus do?” (WWJD) is not just a cliché for us—we really do work to run our organization in this manner and so promote dignity and hope to our partner families, staff and all volunteers that help us in our work. The interactions that we all have with our partner families as they work right alongside us to build their homes are intended to support the sustainable and transformational development in their lives. The Habitat process is much more than just building a house. Habitat partner families also build strength, stability and self-reliance in the process.
Our name is much more to us than just the area we build in; it is also representative of our community, all the individuals, businesses, organizations and churches that partner with us to make the Iron Range a better place to live as we all work together to tackle affordable housing issues.
So why the name North St. Louis County Habitat for Humanity? Well, for one, it defines our service area. If you drew a line at the community of Cotton and proceeded north to Ely and Orr, that is our north to south boundary. To the west we go as far as Hibbing and to Hoyt Lakes to the east. We take great pride in working to serve our entire area and not just one or two larger cities in our service area. So far, we have built in 15 communities: Aurora, Babbitt, Biwabik, Buhl, Chisholm, Cook, Ely, Embarrass, Eveleth, Gilbert, Hibbing, Mt. Iron, Soudan, Tower, and Virginia.
Our name is much more to us than just the area we build in; it is also representative of our community, all the individuals, businesses, organizations and churches that partner with us to make the Iron Range a better place to live as we all work together to tackle affordable housing issues. Our service area is our home, it is yours too, and it continues to take on great significance to Habitat homeowners that we give a hand up to. Building and affordably buying a home helps them put down permanent roots and connection to our northland communities.
Although we often get labeled as a government agency and have to explain why that is not the case, let me briefly describe the importance of our local government support in the work that we do. St. Louis County is very supportive of our efforts. They often describe us, and rightly so, as the largest single family home developer on the Iron Range. They partner with us by helping us obtain severely discounted tax forfeited lots to build Habitat homes on. Each year we have been awarded part of the County’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to help us acquire land and also conduct rehab work on homes.
We work closely with County agencies to get referrals of families who need our help. Our local cities and towns also work closely with us to facilitate the building of homes. Discounted or donated permit fees, donated lots, and overall support for the work that we do from our cities and towns are a critical success factor for our Habitat work. We also receive support from the state of Minnesota through the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency in the form of second mortgages to our partner families to help make the price of their first mortgage more affordable and sustainable. This year, we are greatly encouraged by the help we are receiving from the Department of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation as they provided funding to help bring in the infrastructure for our new construction projects including sewer, water, and site preparation.
We are very grateful for all this wonderful government support. It makes up about 30% of our funding stream for helping our neighbors on the Iron Range. We are also very thankful to you, who live, work or come to the Iron Range for recreation and other purposes. You have a deep care for this community, and you show it with your generous support of North St. Louis County Habitat for Humanity with your donations of time, talent and dollars.
Thank you for your support!
PO Box 24