Project Highlight: Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia

In 2023, Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia celebrated its largest simultaneous home dedication to date, handing over six new homes at affordable prices to families in need through its Homeownership Program. Thanks to the program, these six families and 16 children now have a place to call home on Page St. in Philadelphia. 

The Homeownership Program is designed to provide a hand-up, not a handout, to low-income families who may struggle to become first-time homeowners or qualify for traditional mortgages. Habitat Philadelphia builds and rehabs homes and makes them available for purchase with zero-interest mortgages to people who qualify for the program. 

This program is just one of the ways Habitat Philadelphia is helping to provide affordable housing to families in need all across the city. To date, Habitat Philadelphia has built or sold 260 affordable homes to first-time homebuyers and worked with over 900 families to repair homes. The families moving to the newly constructed Page Street homes earn between 30% – 80% of the area median income. 

Despite encountering some initial challenges, the Page St. project progressed smoothly, ultimately reaching its completion in late 2023. To streamline construction and build excitement for the new homes, Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia partnered with TrueLook to install construction cameras for monitoring and documenting the project’s progress. TrueLook’s Cameras offered “peace of mind” to the construction project managers by giving them additional eyes on the jobsite which helped mitigate security risks and reduced the need for excessive site visits.

Remote live viewing and Intelligent Security weren’t the only two benefits that Habitat Philadelphia took advantage of during the construction process. They also utilized the cameras’ time-lapsing capabilities to create high-resolution videos of the two-year project condensed into just two minutes.

 “The ability to expand TrueLook Camera view access to a wide array of internal personnel and even the general public in a manner that enabled organized, customized, systematic management and discretion over that access was an unexpected plus.”

These videos, along with shareable links for real-time viewing, provided “a wow factor for project administrators” and built excitement in the community about the new homes. Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia applauded TrueLook for providing an all-in-one solution to their construction needs.