Habitat Macedonia’s work featured in Financial Times

Too cold to live in: how families in Macedonia are rebuilding their homes, an article published in Financial Times on December 11, 2018.

Heating an apartment can cost up to half the average salary — but Habitat for Humanity is helping to fix that, says the author Valerie Hopkins in the article that describes a decade long work of Habitat Macedonia on improving the energy efficiency in the Macedonian residential sector.

Since 2009, says the author, Habitat has provided help to make 60 buildings — with a total of 1,900 apartments — more energy efficient. The organization estimates this can save families up to 40 per cent on heating costs. Now they can make ends meet — and the air they breathe at home is also cleaner than that of most Macedonians, says the author. Habitat Macedonia’s work has been seen as even more important by FT, given the fact that Skopje was named Europe’s most polluted capital in 2018 by the World Health Organization, partly because two-thirds of households use firewood as their primary source of heating. Its particle-pollution rates can register more than 10 times higher than EU air quality standards, and the WHO estimates this kills 2,574 people prematurely every year...

The story is part of the FT’s Seasonal Appeal for Habitat for Humanity, an organization that is dedicated entirely to housing and issues related to it, working in more than 70 countries. The entire story can be accessed at: https://www.ft.com/content/c7be121a-f8b0-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c