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Dan Kegley/Aulbin and Catherine Pennington, for whom the new Smyth County Chapter Fuller Center for Housing will build a home in Konnarock, rise to be recognized at a groundbreaking ceremony Saturday. Millard Fuller, creator of Habitat for Humanity International in 1976 and Fuller Center for Housing two years ago, says the new organization is trying to be faithful to the original principals of Habitat.

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Fuller builds homes, new relationships for grassroots housing movement

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

If they glimpsed him talking with a small group in the General Francis Marion Hotel Saturday morning, people unfamiliar with Millard Fuller may have thought a presidential candidate was stumping in Marion.
Outgoing but not overbearing, smiling almost constantly, commanding a mental encyclopedia of facts and figures, and crisscrossing the country on a weekly basis, Fuller himself sees the similarity to running for office.
“My life is like a political campaign with no election,” said Fuller, who is known around the world as the humanitarian who created Habitat for Humanity International and two years ago, the Fuller Center for Housing. Both are based in Americus, Ga.
Fuller was in Santa Barbara, Calif., last week. He lectures two days next week at Elon University in North Carolina. Then he’s off to Atlanta to break ground for the first Fuller Center house there.
Fuller’s visit to Smyth County this weekend marks a couple of occasions. One is the defection this winter of the county’s Habitat affiliate to the Fuller Center. The other was a groundbreaking Saturday afternoon for construction of the new chapter’s first home.
Twenty-nine years after starting Habitat in a converted chicken barn, Fuller and Habitat parted ways in 2005 and he formed the Fuller Center. “What we’re trying to do is to be faithful to the original principles of Habitat,” Fuller said. “It has grassroots leadership,” and has a Christian rather than corporate philosophy like that Habitat adopted two years ago.
The Smyth affiliate’s departure from Habitat is part of a national trend among affiliates in smaller communities.
Smyth County’s former Habitat affiliate is the second to follow Fuller back to the basics. Webster Parish, La., was the first, and a group in Iowa is about to cross over, he said.
“We’re in touch with about 30 affiliates who have not taken a final vote, but it’s on their agenda to come over to us,” Fuller said.
Many affiliates disagree with a new corporate environment at Habitat, or they are unable to meet requirements laid out in its new, 150-page franchise agreement, Fuller said.
“For years, Habitat had a relationship with its affiliates through a two-page covenant,” Fuller said. Habitat “has become more corporate, more like a business.”
While drawing clear distinctions between his former and present organizations, Fuller is careful not to sound critical of Habitat.
“I’m in no way against it,” he said. “Anybody out there building affordable housing should be supported.”
Fuller is also careful to say he is not against corporations even though his former organization’s alignment with them moved it from his founding philosophy.
“Big corporations don’t sign on because of some belief in doing good,” he said. “They do it because it’s good for business. That’s not to say there are not good people in corporations. But corporations are not in business to help the poor. They are in business to pay the stockholders.”
A high-ranking Starbucks official has responsibility with Habitat now, and Bank of America sponsors Habitat’s call center, Fuller said. “Habitat is an arm of corporate America. I’m not against corporate America. I just don’t want to be their arm.”
Defections come in all sizes. Some, like Smyth’s, see boards and volunteer bases remain intact through the move. Others involve splits within Habitat affiliates when only part of their members leave to join Fuller. In a few cases, affiliate directors have resigned their posts and joined Fuller.
Some Fuller chapters are forming without ever being part of Habitat, Fuller said.
Some of the disagreement with Habitat, according to Fuller, surrounds stipulations within its franchise agreement. Larger, urban affiliates with greater resources support the agreement and its requirements, which include setting quotas for the number of houses that must be built in a year, Fuller said.
Quotas can introduce problems in rural areas. Former Smyth Habitat board member and now Fuller chapter president Neil Castrodale said the local volunteers can “build a house every two years. They say you’ll be disaffiliated if you don’t meet quotas.”
Most disturbing to Fuller is Habitat’s new demand that home occupants be evicted if they fail to make house payments for two consecutive months. That requirement, he said, led to one affiliate director’s resignation and move to Fuller Center.
Eviction is anathema to Fuller. Bill Baldwin, a long-time Smyth Habitat volunteer and board member, said he once heard Fuller speak at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Fuller, he said, asked a local affiliate builder if home occupants ever had trouble making payments. Sheepishly, the man said yes.
“Good!” Fuller said. “That means you are choosing the right people” for whom to build homes. “As Christians, that’s what you’re supposed to do, reach out to people.”
Fuller is especially proud of the growth the Fuller Center has shown. In less than two years, he said, Fuller has become established in 31 cities in 18 states and is in seven foreign countries.
In its fifth year, Fuller said, Habitat was also in seven other countries but only had 14 affiliates in the U.S.
“We’re growing much faster than Habitat ever did,” he said.
He attributes the Fuller Center’s success to his campaign with no election. “I’ve been out on the road for 40 years making speeches,” Fuller said. “I know tens of thousands of people and tens of thousands know me.”
He’s known in Konnarock now, where on a foggy, misty Saturday afternoon he helped his local chapter break ground for a house for Aulbin and Catherine Pennington, who live in a house built in 1890. The house, Baldwin said, has seen four generations of the same family.
“I’m 70 now,” Aulbin Pennington said. “I’ve been praying for a new house for 69 years, and I finally got through.”
Catherine Pennington was thrilled not only at the prospect of a new house but also at seeing the founder of the Fuller Center himself present to break ground for it.
“Ohhhh, it’s great!” she said. “It’s a real pleasure. It’s a dreary day outside, but it’s a happy day for me. I won’t know what to do with myself in a new house.”
The new home will be built a few yards behind the old house by the Fuller Center’s Smyth chapter. The Pennington property sits on the Smyth/Washington County line, but the home will be in Smyth, Baldwin said.
Excavation of the building site has begun, so the groundbreaking was held at the community center in Konnarock. Inside hangs a plaque in memory of the son Penningtons’ lost in Iraq almost four years ago. Staff Sgt. Gregory Pennington, 36, was killed in Baghdad on June 21, 2004, while evacuating his men during an attack on their camp.
Marion VFW Post 4667 not only presented the colors to begin the event, but contributed $2,000 to the chapter for the home’s construction and pledged another $3,000 to be given upon the project’s completion.
A second home is under way on Chilhowie Street in Marion, but Baldwin said the Pennington project will be given priority. The Marion work was not affected by the switch to Fuller by the former Habitat affiliate that started it, Baldwin said.
Construction is expected to be finished at the Konnarock house before next winter.
The Marion and Konnarock homes will be built under the Fuller Center’s 501(C)3 non-profit umbrella as the Internal Revenue Service processes the Smyth Chapter’s own non-profit application, Baldwin said.
Two houses built at once “is a load” for the local volunteers, who come as individuals and from churches and other organizations. But Fuller has a plan to help more people by repairing the homes they live in, instead of always building new houses, Baldwin said. The plan draws another distinction between Fuller and Habitat.
“Under the Fuller Center, there’s a new concept he’s introduced called the Greater Blessing,” Baldwin said. “We’ll go into the homes of senior citizens, people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, to make repairs as opposed to building a new home. We’d contribute, say, $5,000 worth in a new porch or bathroom. Then we’d sit down with the owner and say they’ve been given a blessing. We’d ask them how long they think it will take them to repay it. If they say five years, for instance, we’d give them 60 envelopes to make monthly payments. If they miss some months or they can’t pay at all, that’s fine. There’s no contract. They don’t have to pay.”
If they can pay, according to Baldwin, they pay their blessing forward, providing resources the chapter can use to make repairs for others.
A charity that doesn’t require paybacks must stand on a substantial financial base. Fuller said his “bedrock of support comes from individuals and churches. Additional support comes from companies and civic groups like Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis.”
Corporate sponsorship is not a requirement. “Habitat started in 1976. We got our first corporate sponsor in 1990,” Fuller said.
Castrodale said the contributing companies “tend to be smaller. The ones that are vested locally are the ones likely to come up with the money.”
In Konnarock Saturday, the Habitat-Fuller split, the defections of affiliates, and corporate culture were the farthest things from the minds of those who gathered to celebrate new beginnings. The day was all about grassroots Christianity, people in their communities guided by their faith, committing to helping neighbors.
A Baptist, Fuller can quote his Bible and finds support for his way of running a home-building charity in words attributed to Christ. “As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me,” Fuller said. “It’s like you built a house for Jesus.”

Dan Kegley writes for the Smyth County News & Messenger and may be reached at 276-783-5121 or .