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No More Shacks!: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity
Tells the story behind Habitat for Humanity, a religious organization which works together with the poor to build them homes, and explains Habitat's plan to eliminate poverty housing throughout the world
220 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1986
24 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2025
I've had this book on my shelf for quite a while, and finally read it. Wow, you can almost feel Fuller's enthusiasm pulsing out of the pages! This is the story of how Habitat for Humanity was founded, and telling about it's first ten years of existence. Founded in 1976 in Americus, Georgia, at the time this book was written (1986) Habitat had spread to 145 local chapters in the US and sixteen countries.
The book is chock-full of human interest stories, putting names and (with the photos included) faces with the statistics. The depth and breadth of volunteer commitment is amazing. The descriptions of the incredible poverty in which people were living before Habitat built homes for--and with--them is heartbreaking.
Habitat was founded first as a partnership with God, and then with others. Each new Habitat homeowner is given a Bible along with the keys to their home. Fuller talks about the support and involvement of so many churches from across the country and across the religious spectrum. His most famous supporters, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, are featured here. I had no idea how deeply their involvement went. At Carter's request, Fuller gave him a list of 15 different ways in which the former president could help the ministry, and Carter said he could help with most of them. And did.
As much as this book is a compelling human interest story, a story of faith communities banding together to meet needs, it is even more a clarion call for others to be involved and invested in this ministry. The vision of Habitat is breathtaking: to eliminate poverty housing from the face of the earth. I challenge you to read this book, find a local Habitat affiliate, and join in the work.
The book is chock-full of human interest stories, putting names and (with the photos included) faces with the statistics. The depth and breadth of volunteer commitment is amazing. The descriptions of the incredible poverty in which people were living before Habitat built homes for--and with--them is heartbreaking.
Habitat was founded first as a partnership with God, and then with others. Each new Habitat homeowner is given a Bible along with the keys to their home. Fuller talks about the support and involvement of so many churches from across the country and across the religious spectrum. His most famous supporters, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, are featured here. I had no idea how deeply their involvement went. At Carter's request, Fuller gave him a list of 15 different ways in which the former president could help the ministry, and Carter said he could help with most of them. And did.
As much as this book is a compelling human interest story, a story of faith communities banding together to meet needs, it is even more a clarion call for others to be involved and invested in this ministry. The vision of Habitat is breathtaking: to eliminate poverty housing from the face of the earth. I challenge you to read this book, find a local Habitat affiliate, and join in the work.
September 23, 2025
BOOK REVIEW – No More Shacks, The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity, by Millard Fuller and Diane Scott (1988)
Inspired by Jimmy Carter’s support of Habitat for Humanity, I became involved with the Rochester, NY chapter in 1988. I was invited to join the board and 2 years later served a term as president. The book is part memoir, part manifesto, and part history of how a daring idea — that decent housing is a human right — could grow into a global movement. The book captures both the urgency and the simplicity of a vision that has transformed communities worldwide. It is a book that combines narrative passion with organizational blueprint, and it remains essential for anyone seeking to understand how faith-driven activism can lead to systemic social change.
Millard Fuller’s story is framed as a moral awakening. A successful businessman, he and his wife Linda renounced a comfortable life of wealth after realizing that material success had cost them both family and meaning. Their journey led them to Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, where Clarence Jordan — the prophetic Baptist preacher, farmer, and author of the Cotton Patch Gospels — was living out a radical experiment in Christian community.
Jordan, who had dedicated his life to racial reconciliation, nonviolence, and a gospel lived in practice, provided both the theological framework and the practical inspiration for Fuller’s new calling. At Koinonia, the idea of “partnership housing” was born: building simple, decent homes with and for the poor, financed with no-interest loans and sustained by sweat equity. Fuller would later write that Jordan gave him not only the theological rationale but the courage to dream beyond the local experiment.
The book carefully explains the mechanics of the Habitat model:
No-profit, no-interest homes. Families repay the costs into a revolving fund, ensuring sustainability.
Sweat equity. Homeowners build alongside volunteers, creating both dignity and shared responsibility.
Community focus. The projects unite volunteers from all walks of life in common cause, breaking down social barriers.
This was not charity in the traditional sense, but solidarity. Fuller emphasizes that the poor are not “clients” or “recipients” but partners.
The writing is unapologetically infused with Christian conviction. Fuller and Scott constantly ground their narrative in biblical references, particularly the call to love one’s neighbor and to live out justice. Yet the tone does not exclude those outside the faith; rather, it demonstrates how spiritual ideals, when translated into practical action, can generate profound social change. The evangelical fervor of the prose mirrors Fuller’s personality — determined, uncompromising, sometimes impatient, but always urgent about the mission.
Clarence Jordan never lived to see Habitat become the international force it is today — he died suddenly in 1969, before the movement formally took shape — but his fingerprints are on every page of No More Shacks! and every Habitat home that has been built since. Fuller and his successors credit Jordan with articulating the biblical imperative that “the earth is the Lord’s” and that private wealth must serve the common good. Jordan’s radical commitment to racial equality in the Deep South — which drew violence and economic boycotts against Koinonia — modeled the courage Fuller would need to launch a global housing ministry.
The power of No More Shacks! lies not only in recounting Habitat’s early history but in showing how a simple, replicable idea can inspire thousands of communities. Today, millions of volunteers and homeowners worldwide have participated in Habitat projects, but the DNA remains the same: a blend of moral conviction, grassroots practicality, and bold imagination.
No More Shacks! is a powerful reminder that social transformation can begin with ordinary people daring to act on extraordinary convictions. Fuller’s journey from wealthy businessman to servant-leader, coupled with Clarence Jordan’s prophetic influence, makes the book not just a chronicle of Habitat’s birth but a moral challenge to all who read it. It is a testimony that movements do not begin in boardrooms or legislative halls, but in communities where faith, vision, and courage converge.
Quotes:
“The poor themselves must become builders of their own houses, partners in their own salvation. What we seek is not charity but justice, not a handout but a hand up. Decent shelter is not a luxury to be earned after all else, but a basic right bestowed on every child of God.”
“Clarence Jordan taught us that the Gospel was not a set of ideas to be preached on Sunday morning but a hammer and nails to be used on Monday. To follow Christ was to put your hands in the dirt, to work shoulder to shoulder with those the world had forgotten, and to declare with every wall raised that there are, indeed, to be no more shacks.”
Inspired by Jimmy Carter’s support of Habitat for Humanity, I became involved with the Rochester, NY chapter in 1988. I was invited to join the board and 2 years later served a term as president. The book is part memoir, part manifesto, and part history of how a daring idea — that decent housing is a human right — could grow into a global movement. The book captures both the urgency and the simplicity of a vision that has transformed communities worldwide. It is a book that combines narrative passion with organizational blueprint, and it remains essential for anyone seeking to understand how faith-driven activism can lead to systemic social change.
Millard Fuller’s story is framed as a moral awakening. A successful businessman, he and his wife Linda renounced a comfortable life of wealth after realizing that material success had cost them both family and meaning. Their journey led them to Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, where Clarence Jordan — the prophetic Baptist preacher, farmer, and author of the Cotton Patch Gospels — was living out a radical experiment in Christian community.
Jordan, who had dedicated his life to racial reconciliation, nonviolence, and a gospel lived in practice, provided both the theological framework and the practical inspiration for Fuller’s new calling. At Koinonia, the idea of “partnership housing” was born: building simple, decent homes with and for the poor, financed with no-interest loans and sustained by sweat equity. Fuller would later write that Jordan gave him not only the theological rationale but the courage to dream beyond the local experiment.
The book carefully explains the mechanics of the Habitat model:
No-profit, no-interest homes. Families repay the costs into a revolving fund, ensuring sustainability.
Sweat equity. Homeowners build alongside volunteers, creating both dignity and shared responsibility.
Community focus. The projects unite volunteers from all walks of life in common cause, breaking down social barriers.
This was not charity in the traditional sense, but solidarity. Fuller emphasizes that the poor are not “clients” or “recipients” but partners.
The writing is unapologetically infused with Christian conviction. Fuller and Scott constantly ground their narrative in biblical references, particularly the call to love one’s neighbor and to live out justice. Yet the tone does not exclude those outside the faith; rather, it demonstrates how spiritual ideals, when translated into practical action, can generate profound social change. The evangelical fervor of the prose mirrors Fuller’s personality — determined, uncompromising, sometimes impatient, but always urgent about the mission.
Clarence Jordan never lived to see Habitat become the international force it is today — he died suddenly in 1969, before the movement formally took shape — but his fingerprints are on every page of No More Shacks! and every Habitat home that has been built since. Fuller and his successors credit Jordan with articulating the biblical imperative that “the earth is the Lord’s” and that private wealth must serve the common good. Jordan’s radical commitment to racial equality in the Deep South — which drew violence and economic boycotts against Koinonia — modeled the courage Fuller would need to launch a global housing ministry.
The power of No More Shacks! lies not only in recounting Habitat’s early history but in showing how a simple, replicable idea can inspire thousands of communities. Today, millions of volunteers and homeowners worldwide have participated in Habitat projects, but the DNA remains the same: a blend of moral conviction, grassroots practicality, and bold imagination.
No More Shacks! is a powerful reminder that social transformation can begin with ordinary people daring to act on extraordinary convictions. Fuller’s journey from wealthy businessman to servant-leader, coupled with Clarence Jordan’s prophetic influence, makes the book not just a chronicle of Habitat’s birth but a moral challenge to all who read it. It is a testimony that movements do not begin in boardrooms or legislative halls, but in communities where faith, vision, and courage converge.
Quotes:
“The poor themselves must become builders of their own houses, partners in their own salvation. What we seek is not charity but justice, not a handout but a hand up. Decent shelter is not a luxury to be earned after all else, but a basic right bestowed on every child of God.”
“Clarence Jordan taught us that the Gospel was not a set of ideas to be preached on Sunday morning but a hammer and nails to be used on Monday. To follow Christ was to put your hands in the dirt, to work shoulder to shoulder with those the world had forgotten, and to declare with every wall raised that there are, indeed, to be no more shacks.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews