About Us

This is the blog home for the Texas City, TX Chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat’s mission: To eliminate poverty housing for the 80% of the World’s population living in poverty. It is a Christian ecumenical group. Since 1976 collectively some 2500 affiliates have built over 200,000 homes. We do this using volunteer labor to build etc. and sell the home at cost via an interest free mortgage. Homes are built with donated money. When the home is paid for, these moneys are used to build more homes.

To save a year in start-up time we became a Chapter of Bay Area Habitat for Humanity Affiliate, Houston. They were very helpful in guiding us, particularly in construction, and family selection.
We became an Affiliate in August 2005.

Our first major donor was Texas First Bank, followed quickly by Union Carbide and the Rotary Club of Texas City for the first on completed in the summer of 1998. Sterling Chemicals donated most of the money for home #2. For the next 7 homes the major donor was Mrs. Cassady. Curves Corp. was the major donor for home #10, and BP Amoco is the Major donor for home #11.

We have been building a home a year since completing the first one in June 1998. Texas City is a community of about 45,000 located on Galveston bay about 50 miles SouthEast of Houston. The South side of the city consists of a half dozen major petro-chemical corporations.

We could build more homes if we had more volunteers. A typical home takes about 3300 hors to complete. 350 of those hours are from the family chosen for the home. We contract out about 400 hours where we do not have the expertise or specialized tooling. We welcome behind the scene volunteers for: Family Selection; Construction; Family Support; Publicity; Fund raising; Church Relations; Site Selection; Volunteer Coordinator; President; Treasurer, Secretary; etc. The behind the scenes tasks are vitally important.

There are a lot of benefits from Habitat housing for the families and the community. For instance: We drove by a newly occupied Habitat home just as the owner came out. We stopped and asked how she liked it. First words “ It is so quiet”. When you think about it, the family had moved from a 24/7 noisy environment. Now they all get a good nights sleep, no grouchy bears, few distractions, home work gets done, etc.

The Texas City Chapter Secretary is Russ Furley.
Our physical address is PO Box 726, Texas City, TX 77592
Phone (409) 945-4696.

You may email our blog site: texascityhabitat@yahoo.com
You may email our Board of Directors by contacting Russ Furley at wrful@earthlink.net

A photo journal is located at our Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/texascityhabitat/

These sites are maintained free of charge for the purpose of sharing our Habitat experiences with the rest of the world. Welcome and please feel free to join us at the worksite!!