About Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity International works in partnership with God and people everywhere, from all works of life, to develop communities with people in need by building and renovating houses so that there are decent houses in decent communities in which people can experience God’s love, and can live and grow into all that God intends.

Habitat for Humanity International, of which we are an affiliate, is an ecumenical Christian housing ministry with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. While HFHI is built on Christian principles, the organization is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing for people of all faiths, races, and ethnicities throughout the world. The Stillwater affiliate is doing its part locally to reach that goal. Many individuals and families who live and work in Stillwater find that decent housing is either not available or not affordable to them. Stillwater Habitat had a tremendous milestone in 2005. A child of our first partner family graduated from OSU, the first child to graduate college in our Stillwater Habitat family. This is very concrete evidence of the success of our mission to provide “a hand-up not a hand-out”.

Families and individuals are selected to become owners of Habitat houses on the basis of their income, number of people in the family, employment record, their current housing conditions, and other criteria. The Family Selection Committee works hard to choose applicants who will succeed as responsible homeowners.

Volunteers work alongside the selected partner families in constructing simple, decent homes. The families contribute hundreds of hours of "sweat equity" in building their own homes and then pay a mortgage that is interest free. The mortgage payments then are applied to the building of additional houses. To date, more than 225,000 houses have been constructed in over 40 countries.

Stillwater Habitat for Humanity (SHFH), originally named Payne County Habitat for Humanity, held its first meeting in January 1990, and was granted affiliate and non-profit status on February 10, 1991. As of December 2006, SHFH had completed twelve houses in the Stillwater area. These houses were built on donated property, land acquired from the City of Stillwater, or land purchased from the owner.

In August 2007, the Board approved the selection of our fourteenth partner family.  Construction is underway and the house is expected to be completed soon. The recipients are excited about their new home and have been busy working off their sweat equity.

We are blessed with many volunteers, without whom, we could never accomplish what we do. Even so, SHFH has grown to the point that this year, we hired three people to help shift some of the burden off our volunteers. The positions that were created are Financial Assistant, Construction Supervisor and ReStore Manager.

Stillwater Habitat for Humanity Staff

Eileen Cravello Financial Assistant

The faith community is critically important to the mission of Habitat in providing spiritual, financial, and volunteer support. It is a goal of SHFH to enter into covenant relationship with local faith groups committed to helping their neighbors in need.