Philanthropy

I've been mulling over how to pair my love of house rehabbing with my desire to give back to the less fortunate.  If I could marry the two, that would be epic.  There is a Tampa based charity that I think I need to learn from, Rebuilding Together Tampa, and I've been meaning to give them a call and see if I can pick their brains.

For posterity, I'm going to download what's been rattling around in my brain for a potential charity model...

Tonight I thought about finding people to donate their houses to my foundation/charity in their will.  I would then rehab them with company funds, and sell them to the applicant for the cost of renovations plus a small fee to cover overhead.  This is a really long term goal here, but I could also start by tailoring some of my probate marketing to people who have inherited the houses and see if they'd be interested in donating or accepting substantially less than market value for a house.  Ideally, I'd like to give them to single parents, because now that I'm a parent I realize I can't even imagine how hard single parenting is.

The applicants would have to show a steady enough income that they could pay taxes, insurance, and their mortgage (rehab+fee - think $30-$50k).  I imagine them starting with some percentage of equity in the house and then having the remainder vest over a long period (10 years?).  If they sell before that, the unvested portion reverts to the charity for work on another house.

Anyway, that's one thought. I'm open to hearing other thoughts if you want to play the "what if?" game!