THE CAUSE
Millions of homes across the country cannot meet their basic nutritional, medical, and educational needs becuase they are spending more than 50% of their income on housing. Worse, these families are forced into inexpensive houses that are breaking down and overcrowded. Bike & Build helps build affordable housing unites, support other affordable housing programs, and engages communities to spread awareness.
YOUR contributions go to funding and making the route possible so we can connect with communities to build houses and educate. The donations also go to support the affordable housing organizations Bike & Build works with.
THE PROBLEM
Cost burdens:
Residents are paying an excessively large portion of the income towards housing. Specificly, more than 14 million households spend over 50% of their income on housing.* The fedarl minimum wage has stagnated since 2009. To afford the national fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment ($806/month), an individual would need ot work 86 hours at minimum wage.**
Physical inadequacy:
Due to high housing prices and low wages families are forced to either skip on basic ammenities like food, medical, or education to pay for housing, or to live in inadequately structured homes. This can look like unsafe stairs, lack or hot water, electricity, unclean water, or missing toilets. One in seven poor families live in housing that is physically dangerous or inadequate.***
Overcrowding:
In order to meet adequate living accomadtions some families increase the number of residents in the house to be more than the total number of rooms. About 6.1 million households live in overcrowded conditions.****
THE SOLUTION
It's YOU! You are the solution. Armed with this knowledge you can help us make a direct impact across the nation. Bike & Build is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing more affordable housing to the states. They enable young adults like myself with the ability to bike across America to help build houses, educate communities, and raise awareness. Your contributions go to funding the route and the housing organziations we help.
Bike & Build disbursed nearly $625,000 last year to affordable housing organizations. Since their founding in 2003 they have sponsored 3,000 riders to pedal 9.5 million miles, and have donated $5.8 million and volunteered 200,000 build site hours.
Visit here to learn more
*The Department of Housing and Urban Development
** https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html
*** http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/OOR2014_Introduction.pdf
**** Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation's Housing 2004
