This year, Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte will spend only about one third of its efforts on new construction.

Most of the time, its crews of volunteers and builders will be making major home repairs and fixing up foreclosed homes for resale.

The new focus is a reaction to the glut of vacant, foreclosed properties that have idled or stalled operations for many new home builders nationally.

In the slump, Habitat Charlotte sees lots of opportunity.

"We can buy and rehab less expensively," said Bert Green, Habitat Charlotte's executive director. "We will continue to do that as long as there are properties available."

As recently as 2006, the local Habitat's focus was primarily on new construction for low-income families. Habitat built 61 homes that year.

Through a partnership with the Love Inc. ministry, Habitat started a program in 2007 that allows it to make major home repairs for families that qualified.

The goal of the Critical Home Repair Program is to correct major housing code violations. The repairs help families stay in their homes and protect the existing stock of affordable housing.

Just as that program started to pick up, the real estate market collapsed across the country. In 2009, Habitat bought 20 foreclosed properties and sold two.

Last year brought the first significant decline in new construction for Habitat, with 35 homes built and 22 repaired. Meanwhile, Habitat bought 19 homes and sold 16.

Habitat has rehabbed homes and sold them with no-interest loans for $60,000 to $70,000, Green said. The cost of new construction ranges from about $80,000 to $100,000, depending on size, location and other factors.

Habitat's shift to creating affordable homes from foreclosure fire sales has benefits for low-income homebuyers. It also helps the challenged neighborhoods where the home prices are low enough to make its resale formula work.

Buyers get lower mortgages and the moderately priced homes transition to families rather than investors.

Reselling foreclosed homes also can make a neighborhood more attractive to buyers who come shopping for new homes, said Harriette Mahoney, president of the neighborhood association in Reid Park, a west Charlotte community where Habitat is involved in revitalization.

"If you want to get young people - or anybody - to buy a home here, we want them to buy into a neighborhood ... that they would be proud to call home," Mahoney said. "I don't know that people would want to have company over if there's a boarded up home or a vacant house beside them."

The need for affordable housing in Mecklenburg County is growing. In Mecklenburg County, an estimated 11,094 low-income households pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing, according to a report last year by UNC Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.

The report describes those low-income households as housing-cost burdened.

"With the (population) growth, the housing supply (in Mecklenburg County) is increasing," said Owen Furuseth, lead researcher for the study. "For that population, the housing supply is not increasing fast enough to accommodate them."

Habitat is buying homes wherever it can find affordable properties, Green said. That includes Windy Ridge and Peachtree Hills, two Charlotte communities where foreclosures have mounted.

Critics say many mortgages in those communities should never have been written, that rules for qualifying to buy had become too lax or were circumvented.

"(Forecasters) anticipate foreclosures this year will be as numerous as last year," Green said. "We continue to see the foreclosure market being robust."

By Charlotte Observer KAren Sullivan

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