To me, home is a place where I can cuddle with my family members (of both the human and canine variety). It is a place where I go to relax after a long day out. It’s a place where I cook warm meals for loved ones. Here at Design Fixation I spend a lot of time talking about how to make a house a home, but I rarely touch on the more upsetting fact that hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. don’t have a place to go home to at night. And for those that do, nearly 19 million families spend more than half of their paychecks on housing costs. This creates a burden that often requires people to make difficult choices between their housing, healthcare, education and transportation.
So I’m partnering with one of my favorite organizations, Habitat For Humanity, to try to end the need for families to choose between such necessities as a warm house or a decent education.
Here’s another staggering fact: there is not a single state in our nation where a person working full-time at the federal minimum wage can afford the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
Home Is The Key
Habitat’s Home Is The Key campaign aims to demonstrate how a decent, affordable home creates a better life for families and individuals. Watch the video below to meet Krushetta, the next recipient of a Habitat For Humanity home. It is a common misconception that Habitat homes are simply given to families. I must admit that I thought this was the case. But in reality, the future homeowner helps build their own home, and then pays an affordable monthly mortgage.
How You Can Help
But Habitat can’t do it without your help! Here are a few ways that you can support this important cause…
Go shopping! A handful of corporate sponsors have generously offered to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Home Is The Key campaign:
- Habitat will receive a donation of $5 for every White House Black Market, Soma or Chico’s gift card purchase of $25+ during April or May.
- Buy a slub tee from Chico’s now through the end of May and Habitat will receive a $2 donation.
- Buy a coaster set from At Home during the month of April, and Habitat will receive a donation of $4.55.
- Habitat will receive a $1 donation for every ProMist MAX spray mop sold by O-Cedar now through June 15th.
Or simply donate to the cause! Head over here to make a contribution… every single dollar counts.
Other Notable Corporate Sponsor Donations
- For every #HomeIsTheKey social share, Nissan will donate $5 to Habitat toward a total donation of $250,000.
- Nest is donating $250,000 to Habitat and providing energy-saving technology to Habitat homeowners, building on their commitment to make thermostats available to every home Habitat builds in the US this year. The Home Is The Key house being built in Atlanta will be EarthCents certified and will include Nest’s energy-efficient technology.
Thanks for supporting this incredibly important cause. Just think, you can help someone buy their very first house… and then they can turn their new house into a home, just like we do all the time here on Design Fixation!
This is a sponsored post on behalf of Habitat for Humanity’s Home is the Key campaign and its corporate partners. I feel strongly that everyone deserves a warm space to come home to, and I hope this post will help bring someone closer to that goal. Thanks for supporting the cause!