Habitat for Humanity Failings?

There is a Page 1 story (registration required) in todays NY Times about Habitat for Humanity's struggles in New Orleans. The gist of the story is that Habitat is ill-equipped to handle a job like cleaning up after Katrina because their mission is small-thinking (build a few houses at a time) and New Orleans needs big thinking right now. My favorite quote is:

Its (Habitat's) mission often seems as much about providing spiritual fulfillment to its volunteers as it is about improving the lives of homeowners.

(Remind you of anyone?)

Now I think this is too harsh, but perhaps only slightly so. Habitat is extremely focused on improving the lives of the people in New Orleans. And their efforts are rejuvenating the Upper Ninth Ward (and other areas). But the amount of effort needed is truly daunting and the demands of building and rebuilding 200,000 or so damaged homes is bigger than Habitat can achieve. Still, they should not be the only answer -- just part of it.

One issue Habitat's has is its reliance on "Fly By" volunteers -- people who come in for a day or two at most. A typical day at Habitat is 30 minutes organizing at the main site, 20 minutes organizing at your specific house site, an hour training new people on what you are working on that day, finally four hours of work (split by lunch) and 30 minutes "rolling up". So each day is a half day in reality.

Now, when people like myself come down for several weeks, that process is much improved. We can skip the initial hour of training and free the house leaders to do more. But there is always a new set of people each day and it takes so much time to indoctrinate them.

Perhaps a better solution is to have significant number houses on which longer-term volunteers can focus (and move quickly) -- and a smaller number of "Fly By" houses for the one day people. Of course, to make that work, Habitat needs a large set of longer-term volunteers. So, when I go back, I am looking for people to take with me.