‘This was not a one-and-done deal:’ Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s legacy with Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester recently honored President Jimmy Carter on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Carter and his wife Rosalynn have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that builds affordable homes and promotes homeownership, since its founding in 1984. The nonprofit engages volunteers to help build the homes, including the project the Carters worked on, Mascot Flats. The home still has 12 of the original 19 residents living there.     

New York Nonprofit Media spoke to Sabrina Lippman, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester, to talk about their partnership with the Carters, their impact and legacy they have left.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about Habitat for Humanity NYC and Westchester.

Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester has been building and preserving affordable homeownership for the past 40 years. We started in 1984 and the way we do our work is we simply have a vision where every person has a decent place to live.That is our goal here, and the way we do that in New York, which can be very complex, is by building. We develop multi-family, multi-story and single-family homes. We rehabilitate them and also do a lot of preservation work. For homes or cooperatives that are at risk of being lost to foreclosure due to market conditions, we come in and provide technical assistance. We provide lending through our CDFI, which is our lending arm. Imagine a bank for low-income cooperatives to be able to use to stabilize their buildings. We provide a lot of technical assistance. We also make sure that we are in spaces like flood relief, which is becoming more and more prevalent. We did a lot of work during (Hurricane) Sandy and are doing a lot of work in Westchester County as it relates to (Hurricane) Ida flood relief. And then things like aging in place, allowing seniors to age with dignity in their homes is important. And so we are up there helping, doing retrofitting so that showers are accessible and ramps are available, so that senior citizens can be safe in their own [home]. One of the core beliefs that we have is doing this with volunteers. We engage volunteers, everyday New Yorkers to come out and build with us, to advocate for this work and to advocate for more just housing laws in our city and in our region.

How did the partnership with the Carters begin? And how has it continued to grow throughout the years?

This is a really exciting story because I think it's one that, you know, when people think of habitat, they instantly think of Jimmy Carter. And some people think that he founded Habitat, which is not the case, but he is our most beloved volunteer. Both he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, have partnered with Habitat since the very beginning of its foundation in 1974 with our founder, Millard and Linda Fuller. But one of the little-known facts is that New York City is the location where Jimmy Carter first built on site. So a lot of folks think that it started in Georgia when in actuality, it started in the Lower East Side. The building that he built, which is called Mascot Flats, still stands there today. He came out to build with us in 1984. Those families are still in that building today and have such incredibly powerful stories about how important it was for them to own a piece of New York and what they've been able to do because of that, such as stabilize their families and build equity. One of my favorite stories from that building [is that] one of the homeowners has become a community leader in the Lower East Side and has done incredible social work. So it speaks to our ability to transform lives, and that wouldn't have been possible without Jimmy and Rosalynn coming out and helping build those sites with us. That's really how President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn got started building, and every single year since then, there has been a Carter worker project, and that has happened throughout the country, and then it went global, but it had its roots right here in New York City.

I'd love to hear more specifically about the projects and how it impacted impacts New Yorkers today.

The beautiful thing about President Carter and Rosalynn also was their support and commitment to this mission. This was not a one-and-done deal. This was not ever for a photo op. This was truly because they believed from the bottom of their hearts in transformation and to really support the working class. They started in 1984, they came back several times to New York City, and they built on several of our projects.

What's so special about these buildings is that sometimes it's hard, because there are so many hacks, but what they are, are cooperatives where the shareholders – the owners of this building –  are working class, low income, moderate income, New Yorkers that have done all the right things in their lives. They make too much money to qualify for typical government assistance programs, [but] don't make enough to qualify for something on the market. So, they're the missing middle. They get lost in the shuffle and through home ownership, through the work that the Carters did, we're able to build these really critical infrastructure buildings that preserved home ownership in New York City for decades. And what's so important about creating these pockets of affordability, which now I'm very excited to share, is we have our founding partner of the inner borough Community Land Trust, where, moving forward, these buildings will sit on a land trust, ensuring that they remain affordable for [the] working class of New Yorkers in perpetuity. And that is important, because New York is ever evolving, ever changing. We have seen the impact of gentrification and displacement in this city and in creating these pockets of portability, like Mascot Flats, which Jimmy Carter worked on 40 years ago. Those families have been able to preserve that site. They can stay there. They can build their families in that space and hand that down. And that is how you keep the beauty of New York City. That is how you retain its beautiful diversity, its socioeconomic diversity, cultural diversity, it’s by making sure that working-class families always have access to this city, because that is the lifeblood of how we retain what we love about New York,

What kind of legacy do you think Jimmy Carter and his wife have left on the community and on the work currently being done at Habitat for Humanity?

It is embedded in everything we do. If I had to describe how the Carters have left their mark and their legacy, it is that he is fully committed and understood the importance of homeownership and its impact, not only on families, but on the entire community surrounding it. The ripple effect of being able to have the stability of owning your own home here, – the data speaks for itself. You have better education outcomes. You have better financial outcomes. It is safer for the folks that are there to invest in their communities. And so it has this ripple effect, so the impacts that the Carters have made is to amplify the importance of having access to affordable homeownership, also the incredible change when folks come together, and work together. The theory that we are all connected, and we are in this together and if one of us does well, all of us do well, is something that the Carters embedded in all of the work they did. Whether it was here in New York or across the country, across the globe, it’s bringing folks of different voices, different backgrounds, together for the greater good. In any project that you visit today, of the 2,600 families that we have helped serve, you can see that in every building we have there is heart there, and that is because of what the Carters have done to shape who we are as an organization.

How does Habitat for Humanity plan to carry on this legacy moving forward?

It is hard work here. And the only way we will be able to move this work forward, number one, is persistence and commitment. There is a resilience that the Carters have brought to every one of their projects. I mean the president built (homes) well into his 90s. He was swinging hammers on the build site. And so that perseverance, that resilience, is critical for us to be successful in the future. But I think one of the things that is forgotten is the importance of the advocacy of amplifying how important this work is to keeping and preserving this beautiful city we have. And so the way we are going to carry it forward is by remaining resilient, persevering, knowing that this works with diverse voices, with folks all across all the stakeholders, figuring out how we all come together to truly change and impact and dismantle this crisis that we are in. It is through coming together, bringing different voices to the table, and finding out that we have a lot more in common than what sets us apart. And I think President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter did that so well … and I think that is how we are going to be successful in the future. It is by convening stakeholders together and really finding those commonalities, so that we can lift all those. And so I'm really excited, as a new leader of this organization, to carry that forward, to take that heart that President Carter brought to this work, and bring that forward. To really, truly begin to dismantle this crisis, you have to dream big. That is something that the Carter's always do, and it shows in the work that they've been able to do.