Hammering at foreclosed homes

Let the record show that it was big men and insatiable greed at the bailed-out banks, Fannie Mae, Countrywide and scores of other outfits that inflated the mortgage bubble of a few years ago, leading to the country's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

You won't see many women on that roster of greatest losers. But there's a lot of women rebuilding houses and neighborhoods crushed by the foreclosure crisis.

That story is embodied by a north Minneapolis woman who is working alongside a female crew this summer to create a home from a foreclosed wreck on Emerson Avenue N. that's also part of the economic uplift of the North Side.

"I've always dreamed of owning a house," said Donjia McDonald, a working-class mother who is attending home ownership class and working with the Habitat for Humanity volunteers. "They don't just give away the house. I'll work 300 hours, attend home-ownership classes and make mortgage payments."

The Emerson Avenue renovation is one of several hundred Habitat "Women Build" projects this year targeted at foreclosure-impacted neighborhoods around the country.

"I pull a team together every year," said volunteer Maureen Bazinet, whose crew, one of several dozen who will work on the Emerson Avenue project, also raised $1,900 toward the $75,000-plus gut-and-restoration of the two-level, three-bedroom house. "We have many volunteers."

This is the 14th Women Build house done by Habitat in the Twin Cities, which also just completed its 800th local Habitat house. It is also the first Women Build renovation job, part of Habitat's recent move into remodeling salvageable properties.

"That house on Emerson had become a rental property and a drug house, a real problem for the neighbors," said Sue Haigh, president of Twin Cities Habitat, which expects to build or renovate nearly 60 properties in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the first suburban ring over the next 12 months. "We've changed our business model, almost on a dime, from townhomes in suburbs such as Woodbury and Shakopee ... to becoming a partner with cities coming back from the foreclosure crisis and helping to stabilize these neighborhoods.

"Our foreclosure rate is less than 1 percent of our portfolio and that's extraordinary for working-class families. Our median family income is about $38,000. But they have to attend home-ownership classes, put in sweat equity and contribute at least $2,000 at closing. And the neighbors want them to succeed."

Habitat now a top builder

Habitat, which builds and renovates more than 5,000 units nationally, has become one of the nation's 15 largest home builders, as the big housing producers have slowed down amid the residential glut.

Twin Cities Habitat is helping to turn around the situation on the North Side, where the housing bubble peaked five years ago, long before it rippled through more affluent parts of the city and suburbs.

The median sale price of a house in the Camden neighborhood, in which the Emerson Avenue house is located, has risen more than 100 percent this year from 2009, to $79,500. But it was nearly twice that in 2005.

The good news: today more people are buying houses than walking away from mortgages and more existing homeowners are investing again in their properties.

"It gives neighbors hope in terms of seeing a problem property turned around and a home for a family that has real skin in the game," said Sarah Huss, a veteran Edina Realty agent who lives on the North Side. "And the entry-level price is still very affordable.

"Unlike what happened during the mortgage bubble, these buyers, even first-generation buyers who don't have the generational knowledge about [the time and expense of] homeownership, have more capacity and are attending home-ownership classes and getting their credit in order."

Conservative approach

It's good that adults, led by women, are taking charge of an industry that should be rooted in a conservative, long-term approach.

Twin Cities Habitat, which generated about $9 million from its homebuilding, renovation and mortgage counseling services, is one of several nonprofit developers, including the Greater Minneapolis Housing Corp. and dozens of private contractors who are buying, fixing and selling foreclosed properties at a pace that appears to be cutting into the glut.

The effort is aided by $15.4 million in federal stimulus money that Minneapolis is using to subsidize the demolition, redevelopment, renovation and acquisition of several hundred boarded properties, disproportionately on the North Side, through 2013.

In Minneapolis, where about 3,100 properties were foreclosed in 2008, the number is expected to be closer to 2,000 this year.

The Women Build sponsors this year include Wells Fargo, the Hugh J. Andersen Foundation, Joyful Women Fund and Lowe's.

Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com