MacKenzie Scott Makes $17M Donation To GA Habitat For Humanity

GEORGIA — American author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its affiliates, including more than $17 million to a handful of Georgia organizations.

The Peach State has five Habitat for Humanity affiliates with organizations based in and around Atlanta, Columbus, Gwinnett County, Houston County and a Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity chapter.

Scott's donation is the largest donation from the billionaire author since her 2019 pledge to give away the majority of her earnings. Her donation accounts for nearly 8 percent of the $325 million in donations that Habitat for Humanity International received in its 2020 fiscal year.

The ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pledged in 2019 to give away the majority of her wealth. Through the divorce settlement, Scott received a 4 percent stake in Amazon, which was worth roughly $38 billion at the time, Business Insider reported.

Scott said she has donated $3.86 billion to 465 nonprofits since June, which means she has given away $12.5 billion of her fortune since signing the Giving Pledge in 2019, Business Insider reported.

Scott's current net worth is $49.3 billion as of Friday afternoon, according to Forbes.

The donation will increase the supply of affordable housing, especially in communities of color, according to Jonathan Reckford, Habitat for Humanity International’s CEO.

“This incredibly generous gift will allow us to dramatically increase capacity and implement programs that will have a multi-generational impact on communities around the U.S. and our global mission for many years to come,” Reckford said. “With this donation, Habitat is well-positioned to meaningfully advocate for the systemic and societal changes needed to improve equitable access to affordable housing.”

His group received $25 million from Scott and her husband Dan Jewett. The remaining $411 million will be divided among Habitat's local affiliates.

The Atlanta Habitat affiliate will receive $13.5 million, while the Southern Crescent Habitat chapter will get $1.25 million, WXIA reported.

Rosalyn Merrick, the CEO and president of the Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, told the TV station she is grateful to be recognized for Habitat's work as a whole.

The money donated by Scott will allow the Atlanta affiliate to boost its current efforts.

"This gift just helps us do all the things we were already doing, but reach more families," Merrick said. "We have planned to do 40 builds, 155 repairs and serve a couple more hundred families in our education programs. We will continue to do that but grow those numbers in the next several years thanks to the generosity of Ms. Scott."

Gwinnett-Walton Habitat will receive $2 million and Houston County Habitat will receive $1 million from Scott's donation, WSB reported.

"We could not be more excited to get the gift at a time when, in some ways, the state of housing affordability is the worst that it has been in modern times,"Reckford told The Associated Press.

With the money, most local affiliates will launch projects in their communities while the international team will focus on broader advocacy and efforts to construct homes for working-class families.

“Even before COVID, we already had one in seven families paying over half their income on rent or mortgage,” Reckford told the AP. The last two years made that issue even worse, with many people seeking to buy larger homes to ride out the pandemic.

According to the Habitat “State of Home Affordability” study, Georgia has a shortage of more than 190,000 affordable and available homes.

February data from the Georgia Association of Realtors showed that the statewide median home price for single family housing was $320,089, up 21 percent from January and up 17.6 from one year ago.

Year-to-date statewide home sales were up 1.8 percent in February.

The price range with the largest gain in sales was the $300,000 and above range, where they increased 31.0 percent.

But Georgia's housing market continued to maintain a solid sales pace despite higher interest rates alongside inflation and uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

Homes in the U.S. are being snatched off the market at record prices even through winter, bucking the trend that generally sees slow market activity during the season, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HouseCanary Jeremy Sicklick told Business Wire. HouseCanary is a national brokerage well-known for its housing market and real estate evaluations.

"In November, we witnessed a nearly 15 percent decrease in net new property listings on the market compared to last year, coupled with a growing number of homes going into contract at elevated prices," Sicklick said. "For homebuyers across the country, we expect the shortage of homes for sale to extend well into 2022, setting us up for additional price growth in the spring."

According to an analysis released by the National Association of Realtors last month, U.S. home ownership climbed to 65.5 percent in 2020, with 72.1 percent of white Americans now owning their homes. Yet only 43.4 percent of Black Americans own homes, a proportion even lower than it was in 2010. Habitat for Humanity officials say they hope Scott’s gift will help reverse that trend.

The Associated Press and Patch Editor Miranda Ceja contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on the Atlanta Patch