Building a house takes more than bricks and mortar. It takes heart, vision, and community. In this episode of Servant Leader’s Library, Nicholas Paulukow sits down with Andrew Szalay, President and CEO of Lancaster Lebanon Habitat for Humanity, to talk about what it really means to build hope. From affordable housing challenges to the power of servant leadership, this conversation shines a light on how true leaders create lasting impact.
Nicholas Paulukow
All right, welcome to Servant Leader’s Library, where we’re not just stacking books on dusty shelves—we’re stacking up wisdom from leaders who serve first and lead always. I’m your host, Nicholas Paulukow, CEO of ONE 2 ONE, a managed IT and security firm that keeps businesses running smoothly. Because let’s face it, turning it off and on again doesn’t always get us so far.
So today we’re cracking open a chapter with a man who builds more than houses—he builds hope. Joining me is Andrew Szalay, President and CEO of Lancaster-Lebanon Habitat for Humanity. He’s a devoted family man, a housing advocate, and the kind of leader who knows that the strongest foundations aren’t just poured in concrete—they’re laid in community.
So grab your library card; this is going to be a story worth checking out. All right, Andrew, it’s wonderful to have you today. Why don’t you tell our audience a little bit of your story—your journey—and what led you to Lancaster-Lebanon Habitat for Humanity?
We help leadership teams build more resilient IT foundations. Curious what that looks like?
Andrew Szalay
Sure, yeah. Thanks, Nick, for inviting me to be part of this conversation. I think it’s, what, episode 38 or something?
Nicholas Paulukow
Thirty-eight, yeah.
Andrew Szalay
And normally when I’m calling up and I’m calling you or checking in with ONE 2 ONE—Ryan or whoever—I’m usually just, “Hey, it’s Andrew from Habitat.” So that introduction was really nice and kind of gave me a big picture of what the heck I do here.
We try to keep it very, very flat as an organization, although it’s been growing—with more hierarchy and so forth. We’ve got layers that we probably didn’t have, or maybe need to actually acknowledge we have these days, so we can all be a little bit clearer on how we do our work—which means a little more leadership, skills, and formality and stuff. But I came here eight years ago.
Actually, today’s the 22nd. I moved up here for my first day of work on August 28th. That was when I moved to Pennsylvania.
I was going to be staying in an Airbnb, working for my predecessor as Director of Operations to help run the affiliate, restart the mortgage program, work with the staff, and so forth. So just giving some structure again to the organization when we were back around the corner over on Fairview Avenue.
Nicholas Paulukow
Absolutely, we’re neighbors.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, that’s right. We’ve still got the space and we’re looking forward to hopefully building it out now that we’ve moved over to the new space.
Nicholas Paulukow
All right, that’s amazing.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s awesome.
Andrew Szalay
It’s a nice little lot there. We’ve got some options we’re looking at—how much we can put on—but we’ll wait and see how that goes.
Nicholas Paulukow
As a kid, that’s where we went to rent tools.
Andrew Szalay
I heard that Fairview Rental was there.
Nicholas Paulukow
Fairview Rental—that’s where you went as a kid. I’m telling you. Yeah.
Andrew Szalay
We got it from the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Lancaster around 2000 or 2010. Somewhere around there.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
We’ve owned it free and clear, so it’s been a very good financial investment for us—absolutely. But when it was Fairview Rental, it was a space made for, like, two or three employees with a lot of showrooms and tools and so forth, right?
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, right.
Andrew Szalay
In that garage. And the garage was great. We had a little room that really couldn’t fit the whole board in. It was windowless.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
It was everyone living on top of each other in cubes—but not in a comfortable, sweet way, you know?
Nicholas Paulukow
All right.
Andrew Szalay
So, as we were just talking about before this, we moved into the new space and combined everything with the ReStore. We’re all under one roof—construction, program, fundraising, administration. We’ve got about 26 people, I think.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
In total, including part-timers.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
Part-timers.
Nicholas Paulukow
It’s a beautiful building.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
It’s like a showpiece when you pull up.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, I’m humbled by this. From humble roots with a nonprofit—especially a Habitat organization—I came from all-volunteer.
Some people call it the Taj Mahal of Habitat ReStores, and I’m a little sheepish about it because I’m like, you know, this makes a lot of sense for the business, makes a lot of sense for the staff, but do I want everybody that’s supporting this…? But the result is we’ve made a lot of people proud. In fact, we’ve brought the founders of the organization and a lot of past volunteers, and they see the number of houses—and that’s probably the most important thing.
They see the number of lives and the houses that we’re building, and they come see the shop and they’re proud, and they feel like it’s got that stability to keep carrying on.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s amazing. So you said eight years ago, right? You started in the role?
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, eight years ago.
Nicholas Paulukow
And what drew you to this area to run Habitat?
Andrew Szalay
Oh, sure. I was working for the previous 15 years in Washington, D.C. I left Buffalo, New York—where I grew up—to work for my local congressman from Buffalo in Western New York, and spent five years working there. I actually moved out of Buffalo without a job, just looking for anything until I could go back to grad school—that’s what I was thinking at the time. And then I had this amazing adventure: “Hey, I get to work on Capitol Hill.”
I wasn’t planning on it. I was gonna work for a little policy shop of some kind, and they gave me the housing portfolio. And then after several years—well, I wanted to marry somebody, my wife Natalie, and start a family—I needed to increase my salary.
So I doubled it overnight when I went to a trade association called Mortgage Bankers.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay, okay.
Andrew Szalay
Again, housing.
But then there was the foreclosure crisis, the credit crisis—the Great Recession. It was an amazing time to be there: mortgage licensing, residential foreclosure issues across the country. I got to travel a bit to work with lenders and policymakers across the country. After becoming exhausted from that—only seeing my family on the weekends—we were looking for a change, and I knew my predecessor here, Stacy Reidenbaugh, who’s with 10,000 Friends now.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah.
Andrew Szalay
She hired me to help out with, again, the mortgage program and some other things, because we’re a mortgage lender at Habitat for Humanity.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
We build first, but then that’s how you fund the projects and the home-buying opportunities for our families—our low-income families—and then you make the mortgage. We’re licensed just like every other mortgage bank, but we’re serving the Habitat homebuyers who come into our special-purpose program.
Nicholas Paulukow
I see. Has that become more difficult with the cost of building materials and everything going up?
Andrew Szalay
It’s gotten more expensive.
Nicholas Paulukow
Has that made it harder for people to get to their home-ownership experience?
Andrew Szalay
I would say it’s gotten harder for everyone who wants to become a first-time homebuyer, period. For our Habitat homebuyers, we only have so many homes we can build with the amount that our donors and funders provide—and that goes for our previous Habitat homeowners paying their mortgages, because that goes into the mission.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
The ReStore net income—people call it profit, but it’s net income—funds about a house a year.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
It’ll help us plan for the builds in the next couple of years, because you’ve got to get it all planned out before you start putting something out there for early fundraising.
And then there are fundraising opportunities from individual donors, businesses, churches, foundations, government, and so forth. We’ll apply for all of that so we can layer it and make it impactful.
Nicholas Paulukow
Is it always a new build, or are there renovations too?
Andrew Szalay
We do both.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
We do rehabs—housing preservation—preserving older affordable homes. Pennsylvania has some very old homes. Most of the country, the average age of a house is 17 years old.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
We’re 67 in Pennsylvania.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
As you can imagine, we have a lot of 100-, 120-year-old homes. So it’s very important that we’re doing housing preservation. But we do new development too.
In fact, we just finished four new builds out in Columbia. We’re building five more just across from the Turkey Hill Experience.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay, wow.
Andrew Szalay
I’m planning for an eight-unit condominium—a very small but very important condominium complex—on College Avenue.
Nicholas Paulukow
Oh, wow. That’s nice. All right.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, near the UPMC medical campus there.
Nicholas Paulukow
So many great things happening there. Milagro House is an organization that we support and help, and they’re excited to move there.
And HDC is an organization—it’s just amazing to see how Lancaster County is such a chasm of coming together. Whereas in many other areas I travel, it seems to be like, “We want individual success,” where in Lancaster County we’re very much about collective success, which is pretty neat.
Andrew Szalay
It’s been a while since I actually lived in Buffalo. My family’s still up there, but I felt like—even when I was going to college at Canisius—a lot of the community was very competitive, even among the nonprofits. There was a Habitat affiliate—it was small at the time—and others.
There wasn’t as much collaboration. It wasn’t the same. When I was comparing communities back in the D.C. area versus here, the collaboration and the innovative work that some of these nonprofits are doing—and the number of nonprofits—have been really impressive. I was interested in the fact that LHOP, Tenfold, and Lancaster Area Habitat for Humanity—which became Lancaster-Lebanon—all had roots from Highland Presbyterian Church. It’s a matter of fact.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow—and Samaritan Counseling Center comes out of Highland as well.
Andrew Szalay
There you go.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
That’s four.
Nicholas Paulukow
It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, great leaders out of there.
Nicholas Paulukow
Absolutely. It continues to grow, and it has such an entrepreneurial spirit, which is amazing. We had a guest on before from the High Foundation, and she spoke about their mission being based around housing as well, which we found interesting, and their reach is expanding. So it seems like we’re having a lot more conversation around housing—but I guess you’re saying the unfortunate part is the cost is still pretty high.
Andrew Szalay
Back to that—the cost of housing has obviously gone up. Average housing prices, as of July 2025, have reached a national peak, and the same goes for both counties we serve—Lancaster and Lebanon. They’ve reached all-time highs for average sale price. I think it’s well over—I can’t remember the exact number—$250-something thousand dollars, maybe $270.
Regardless, it puts it more out of reach, especially if you want to be a first-time homebuyer. And now you’re paying 7%, when just five years ago interest rates were about 3%. Seven percent is still historically low, but relative to our recent experience, it feels expensive. That’s the income ratio.
And interest rates, of course, were once 18%, which is hard to fathom—and today we’d be flabbergasted by that.
But again, it’s about recent experience. Seven percent is a barrier, and there aren’t as many properties available. Pennsylvania is, out of 50 states, around 44th or 45th in adding new housing units to the state.
Pew just put a study out about that, ranking us there, and said it was mainly because of local zoning restrictions. Those are real problems.
Nicholas Paulukow
City living prior to COVID seemed somewhat reasonable—like you could get a home in some places for $150,000—and now those homes are double or even triple. What’s the big driver, from your perspective?
Andrew Szalay
Scarcity. Fundamentally, it’s scarcity. There’s enough demand, and there’s also enough wealth among people who have the means to buy. For example, older Americans who want to relocate within the county—I’m not even talking about people moving in, because most of the household formation pressure in this county, according to EDC and others, is happening within the county.
It’s mostly births and family formation. There is some moving in, and that’s what people like to think about, but that’s not the real pressure. It’s almost like we’re outgrowing ourselves.
Nicholas Paulukow
Really?
Andrew Szalay
Lancaster County planners have said it really is a metro county. We have a lot of agriculture, but it’s much more metropolitan than people realize. People love living here.
We have a lot of services, great businesses, great employers, and great farms—and trying to mesh it all together puts a lot of demand on housing right now.
So that scarcity—and the zoning restrictions: How big is the lot size? Is the minimum lot size commensurate with what should be affordable and manageable for taxes, and so forth? What is the minimum square footage for the house? If you’re making them too big, then they’re going to cost much more.
Back in the ’50s and ’60s, post-World War II housing, you’d hear about these two- and three-bedroom homes—1,200 to 1,500 square feet. That was actually a pretty flexible household: you could get all the boys and girls in one room, raise them up, and after they move out, it becomes the craft room or the office.
It’s flexible space, and it didn’t need to be that large. Builders today—the for-profits (and probably us too in some ways)—it’s only really profitable if you’re making the larger home because we’re doing a house at a time.
If we were doing major subdivisions like in the ’50s and ’60s, it would be different because you had a construction industry with more employees and specialists to stage it: foundation specialists, framing specialists, etc.
We still have that today, but nowhere near the scale that made it really affordable—you could build tract housing.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right. Well, you talked about the lifeblood of the organization being volunteers. How does that work? Building a house is pretty technical. How do you get a group of volunteers together and build a home?
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
I mean, that seems very technical.
Andrew Szalay
When I was at Habitat for Humanity International in the D.C. office, somebody whispered to me: “It’s the most inefficient way to build a house—but that’s not really the point.” And that’s absolutely right, because our mission statement is: Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities, and hope.
And that “bringing together” piece is something that’s always important to me. We’ll never get away from the volunteer aspect—both at the ReStore and on our construction sites—because it gets people out of their usual neighborhoods and into places they may never have gone. They see the humanity of the homebuyer and the neighbors in that community—and they contribute.
So that’s non-negotiable for us, mission-wise. But building a home with volunteers these days—we have far fewer skilled contractors than we did back in the ’90s. Lancaster Area Habitat built a subdivision—Emerald Valley, Eucalyptus Street—62 homes not too far from here.
Sixty-two—so it was 31 duplexes, 61 units. And they only had two employees for most of that tenure: a fundraiser/administrator/executive director type and a construction supervisor.
That construction supervisor leveraged the talent of other construction companies and volunteers from churches—mostly building on Saturdays (not exclusively, but mostly)—to hammer those properties out.
Nicholas Paulukow
Well, you build it and then you have to get inspections and all that—that’s got to be an absolute scheduling challenge.
Andrew Szalay
Yes, yes. I’d almost say it’s gotten worse over the last several years, especially building in both cities—Lancaster and Lebanon—and maybe in the Borough of Columbia, too. We’ve gotten so much more regulation. We’re actually a lot smarter than we were back in the ’90s—more intelligent in terms of what we demand: building standards and so forth.
For those inspections—everything’s just safer in what we’re building. Although my—what else?
Nicholas Paulukow
I mean, we have hurricane straps here. If the whole building lifts off, it’s going to be held up by these straps, you know?
Andrew Szalay
Sure, yeah, exactly—which would probably also be helpful for a sinkhole.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s right.
Andrew Szalay
Hopefully the steel beams will hold it up.
Nicholas Paulukow
They’ll just hold it up.
Andrew Szalay
That’s right. Never mind. These are the things that run through my mind—anxiously—when building in Pennsylvania. Anyway, today we have a three-person construction team. We have two people out in the field,
one of them is our director, and we have a project manager who runs interference—schedules and budgets, the administrative side. A lot of people are coordinating volunteers and working with families. It’s a lot of coaching.
Mission focus: What’s the goal for today? Safety first. And safety these days is also: You need to feel safe and comfortable.
If you feel uncomfortable, then you don’t need to continue. In fact, I think it gives a lot more people the confidence—maybe the safety gloves make it feel a little cumbersome, even though it’s probably smarter; but if they feel they have more control another way, that might be better for them.
So, let’s have a conversation with our staff about those things. They’re going to be learning how to frame. I was just up at a build in Lebanon yesterday, on Walnut, and this is an old, large—call it a Victorian row house in the city.
It’s even got pocket doors and so forth.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s awesome. All the great trim and everything?
Andrew Szalay
I saw it when it was—yeah, yeah. We had to pull a lot of it out, but we’re keeping the bones.
I saw it when it was all black and terribly water-damaged. Yesterday I got to see it with a lot of fresh beams completely replaced. Our team, our homebuyers—because they’re earning their sweat equity in the projects—and our volunteers are putting these pieces into place.
They’re learning the bulkheads around the door frames and so forth.
Nicholas Paulukow
How do you become a homebuyer through your program? Are there requirements?
Andrew Szalay
Yes. First of all, our applications are closed right now. What we do is open applications for brief periods of time. We publicize them well. We just opened it up for Lebanon homebuyers recently.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
We had two homes to fill. We didn’t have homebuyers yet. For Lebanon homeownership opportunities, we opened the applications for a week.
We got 96 applications back in, I think, April. Once we look through all the applications for income eligibility, we verify everything.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
They have to be 40% to 80% of the area median income.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
That’s roughly about $27,000 to about $68,000 a year for a family of four.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
They don’t need a minimum credit score, but we need to make sure their debts are manageable. They have to be able to repay a mortgage.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right, a mortgage—okay.
Andrew Szalay
They’re not going to repay a mortgage that’s more than 30% of their gross income. In fact, we underwrite at 28% for a little buffer. That 30% of gross income is widely accepted as affordable.
Interestingly, one out of eight households in Pennsylvania are paying more than 50% of their gross income. That’s cost-burdened—yeah, that’s not good.
That’s one of the things we’re fighting against. That’s our purpose. And we love the idea of not just affordable housing, but affordable homeownership to build up wealth.
And then, of course, they need to demonstrate a need for housing. Is their current rental safe, warm, and dry? That helps us make a priority list of whom we’re going to serve.
I’m expecting—this is just an estimate—it could blow my mind. I’m expecting out of those 96 applications, maybe 16 to 20
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
Habitat homebuyers out of the pool. The rest we’ll continue to work with—to see if we can get them in later on, or talk with them about what they can do. We’re working on financial literacy—with us, Tenfold, and other counselors.
Nicholas Paulukow
Have you ever had a homebuyer who then falls on harder times and can’t afford to pay? How does that work?
Andrew Szalay
That definitely happens from time to time.
We’re dealing with—think of the market in terms of income level. We’re talking low-income families who may have less savings, cash reserves, or access to better insurance. So yes, that happens.
The most important thing is: reach out to us beforehand. Let’s talk. We can do workouts.
We can pause things.
Nicholas Paulukow
Let’s not make it a surprise.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah. One of the beauties of our program—Northwest Bank, by the way, is our servicer. They help us manage escrow for taxes and insurance. They manage that, and then we’re on the hook in the meantime, because they will advance those taxes and insurance in the case of a delinquency.
Nicholas Paulukow
So you’re almost like the co-signer.
Andrew Szalay
In a way. Actually, I’d put it more like—for these first-time homebuyers—maybe when you bought your house or when I bought my first place, I had down-payment assistance from my father-in-law.
He was very generous—$10,000 or $17,000 or $20,000, I don’t remember—but it made it possible.
I didn’t have to get mortgage insurance. Now, these families coming to us don’t have that uncle, grandparent, or great-aunt willing or able to help out. What they can do is put in sweat equity in volunteer hours, and they come help at the build sites too.
That’s where we come in. So as a co-signer—we’re investing in them and their success. Actually, Nick, there’s one great thing I was talking about:
those volunteer hours.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah.
Andrew Szalay
And the success of a Habitat family.
Once they’re in the program and they get the deed to the house, they sign the mortgage, they make their payments and so forth—one of my board members, who used to work for a hospital in management, said if we could get to a 50% success rate, that was good in some of their programs.
Kind of disappointing, in a way—but interesting and notable. When he heard that our default rate—how many homeowners in our Habitat program don’t make it and end up in deed-in-lieu or the risk of foreclosure—we try to avoid foreclosure at all costs for their sake. It doesn’t always work out.
We’ve definitely had them. We try deed-in-lieu or other workouts, maybe a mortgage modification to get it back on track.
We have a 97% success rate.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow, that’s amazing.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah—when he heard that, he said, “I want to get more involved.”
Nicholas Paulukow
Really? That’s amazing.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
And about the hours—are the hours considered equity in the property, or just a requirement to purchase?
Andrew Szalay
It’s more like your interest, in a lot of ways.
We have a 1% down payment of the mortgage price. But we require 250 sweat-equity hours from the homebuyer for a single-head-of-household. We’ve got about 60% single moms in our program right now.
If you have a two-adult household, it’s 400 hours.
Nicholas Paulukow
I see, I see. That’s amazing, though.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
It gets them committed to understanding—and when you build something that you now own, it’s pretty amazing.
Andrew Szalay
Yes.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right?
Andrew Szalay
Yes.
Nicholas Paulukow
You’re really vested in it, right?
Andrew Szalay
You’re going to be part of that community.
Another interesting thing about the program—and this is one of the superpowers our donors embrace with us—is that our build projects sometimes cost more and get appraised for more than what the family can afford. What does that mean? Well, we don’t want to leave exposed equity.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay.
Andrew Szalay
That would leave it open to predatory lending.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right.
Andrew Szalay
So we can put in a subordinate mortgage. We’re assuming it will vanish and they’ll earn it back like appreciation over the years. But we can put a gap there.
So if they get a mortgage for $180,000 over 30 years, and the house is appraised at $200,000, that $20,000—we’ll put another lien on it.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow, okay.
Andrew Szalay
After five years, it starts diminishing—one-twenty-fifth every year.
Nicholas Paulukow
Okay, that makes sense.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah.
Andrew Szalay
As they pay it back, they can earn that as appreciation, basically.
Nicholas Paulukow
They have to be so thankful to have the opportunity—I mean, 1% down, right? So they have to put something in.
Andrew Szalay
Yes.
Nicholas Paulukow
But the ability to have something of their own has to be amazing.
Andrew Szalay
That’s right. Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
I’m first-generation in this country. When my parents got here—
Andrew Szalay
That’s right.
Nicholas Paulukow
They had no room. My dad and his family had nothing. My dad always taught me—and I think I’ve said this before—the ability to work hard, your faith, and your ability to work hard.
He said, if you have those two things, you’ll be fine. You’ll figure it out. But there was no uncle or aunt like, “Here’s a down payment,” right?
Andrew Szalay
Sure.
The only way my parents got a home was because of my grandmother. She moved here and had a little bit of money and said, “I’ll give you the money to build the house as long as I can live there.”
Outside of that, they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be homeowners.
Andrew Szalay
That’s a great partnership. It’s amazing.
Yeah. So my grandmother lived with us. I was the youngest out of these huge families, but—
Andrew Szalay
How big was the family?
My mom’s family is quite large—nine brothers and sisters, tons of cousins and aunts and uncles. Amazing.
My dad’s side—about five of them. They’re the only ones here in the United States; the rest of our family is in Poland.
Andrew Szalay
I’ve got an older brother and sister, and my wife is an only child.
Nicholas Paulukow
Oh, that’s different.
Andrew Szalay
We look around— We’ve got two kids now, and when we look at larger families—it’s beautiful, different.
Nicholas Paulukow
It is, isn’t it? My wife comes from five brothers and sisters—she’s the youngest. It’s way different. There are 38 of us when we get together—
It’s just family, right? Their kids and everything. Way different.
It’s just my sister and me—and I’m like, it’s a lot quieter when we’re together.
Andrew Szalay
With Habitat—homebuyers and volunteers—we all came from all-volunteer roots, and it’s a family culture. We choose to be there.
The staff chooses to be there. In nonprofits, you’re not getting paid for-profit rates. You’re doing this because you want to help out and do something meaningful in a different way.
Volunteers are the same way—they’re giving their time, or in retirement, helping out at the ReStore and the builds. That family culture is how we see our community.
We need to keep giving people the opportunities to do something new, learn something new, and contribute. That’s a big thing about the Habitat movement. There are about a thousand of us across the country, and we’re in 70 countries worldwide.
In the UK, for example, it’s a donor country—we’re not building there, but they’re supporting builds in Africa and India, and so forth. Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
Well, talk about the ReStore. We had an employee who would get up at 5 a.m. to go there, and we never knew. We were like, “What are you doing?”
And he said, “I love to volunteer my time there.” And we’re like, “Well, you can let us know, because we do volunteer time—you don’t have to get up at 5 a.m.” It was a passion for him. Tell the audience a little about that.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, so—first of all, our ReStore is among the early ones in the country. Edgar Stace helped insist or guide us to get Richard Good and a handful of others to help establish it—one of the early ReStores. The notion was: when Habitat for Humanity started under Millard Fuller—and Jimmy Carter helped start the big movement and growth in the ’80s—we started in ’86; Lebanon County started in 1990; we merged in 2016.
Around ’99 or 2000, we opened our ReStore to add organizational capacity. I think Mike Mumma—if I recall—said we wanted the store to fund either a house every year or maybe all administrative costs—something along those lines. I can’t remember the formula back then.
Now we measure it purely in terms of a house. It really does build a house, though it doesn’t get earmarked to one specific address, because the superpower is having cash available before we have fundraisers. For instance, land development—if we’re doing something new.
I’m doing the Wheatland Project, which is part of the UPMC medical campus around College Ave to do the eight condos. We have to invest in stormwater testing—
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah—site work and all that stuff.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah—architectural work, too. We’ll be putting in probably $200,000+ before we ever put a shovel in the ground. And banks don’t love the stuff that’s underground.
Nicholas Paulukow
Exactly—that’s for sure.
Andrew Szalay
There’s not a lot of infrastructure on this site, so we’ve got a lot of planning in process. If anyone’s listening from that neighborhood, we’ll be having a neighborhood meeting about this soon.
I’m just waiting to wrap up one big detail so I can brief you fully. That’ll be the third or fourth community meeting. Anyhow—the ReStore allows us that cash flow.
Fundraising may ebb and flow. Mortgage income is steady. But we need a solid cash position to leapfrog—so we can plan for later on.
Grants can be done maybe 12 months early—18 at most—because they usually want funding to match a certain time period. The ReStore allows unrestricted cash to revolve there. And when funds come in for projects, they can go right into the build itself.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, building from the ground up is a whole different ball of wax. Where we are, we built twice and there was no site work. It was an experience.
I learned more than I needed to know about geothermal, test-bed filtration. I’m like, it doesn’t need to withstand going to NASA—it’s just water.
Andrew Szalay
Permeation tests.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right—100-year flush, you know. There’s a lot of work involved, and it takes time—you’re right.
So you have a lot happening at once. Let’s talk about leadership a little bit. You’re doing a lot of technical things—banking and building—
but you’re also leading a nonprofit. What’s your leadership style? How do you employ that servant-leadership style in your role?
I think my staff would say I wing it a lot.
Nicholas Paulukow
Are you? All right, fair enough. That’s honest.
Andrew Szalay
And I’m sorry, guys. I definitely try to embrace that Habitat family culture. In fact, we were just talking with Work Wisdom—and Kedren and Sarah Colantonio—about whether we should move to more of a hierarchy or market-based model in the future.
That’s something we’re talking about.
I think we need to inject pieces of that, but keep that family culture. It’s all about empowering those individuals who choose to be there. The most important thing with Habitat—and this could be different if I was running, say, my brother’s family business in electrical work— but for Habitat, sharing power is critical because it is volunteer-driven. People want the opportunity to contribute and have impact.
Nicholas Paulukow
To that mission, yeah.
Andrew Szalay
Yes. That goes from board members to committee members—having a say. We’re doing interviews to hire new positions and fill vacancies,
And I’m often reminded, “What’s your decision, Andrew?” I really do want your input—because you understand fundraising better than I do in some ways; this is what you do as a consultant in your business all the time. They’re volunteering their time to help us.
Same with the team. Ben and Sam run the ReStore, and they know it better than anyone.
I want to give them the confidence to say what’s going on—but I really want to know what’s going on day-to-day. How’s your team doing? Nathan and Amy in fundraising—she just left—but what do they need in their program area to be successful?
What knowledge do they need? What technology? Sometimes it’s software.
We’ve definitely got a lot more software these days.
Nicholas Paulukow
I bet you do, yeah.
Andrew Szalay
What do they need to be empowered? There’s a book called Forces for Good by McLeod and Crutchfield, and I was lucky to take a class with Crutchfield not too long ago. One of the six things that makes a successful, impactful nonprofit is power-sharing.
That’s definitely a strength of any good Habitat affiliate. Being the servant leader is really being the humble leader—bringing the right skill sets and experts. You need somebody who really knows construction.
You need somebody who knows the mortgage side of finance. You need someone who knows finance and accounting. It might be a volunteer.
It might be staff. It might be a consultant.
You need someone who knows communication—again, volunteer or staff, or a combination.
I know a little bit—enough to be dangerous—on a lot of things, but I don’t pretend to be the master. We have our superpowers in many areas, but not all—as my team will tell me, too.
Nicholas Paulukow
You mentioned it’s a faith-based organization. How does that play into hiring and leading?
Andrew Szalay
Officially, it doesn’t.
Quick aside—one of my favorite conversations was meeting with Shirat Shalom congregation downtown about partnering on regular volunteer groups. They’re actually up on the build in Lebanon this week. They asked me at the end, “What is your faith requirement?” I said, there isn’t one.
Habitat started—I’m a Catholic, by the way—by a bunch of Protestants.
Nicholas Paulukow
Oh no, I’m a Catholic boy too. I grew up in a faith background.
Andrew Szalay
Exactly. It started with Millard Fuller—a Protestant—who led this amazing movement across the country. It was a federated model—different logos and structures—but the same truths: sweat equity, affordable mortgage, build a house.
Need for housing. I’m actually losing my track of thought—
Nicholas Paulukow
We were on the faith-based aspect.
Andrew Szalay
It really comes down to: we want to show God’s love, and we want to shine light—whether you think that’s religious or not. I believe the only way people can see God’s light now, shy of miracles, is through what we do. You live your purpose.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah.
Andrew Szalay
I hire people who want to do this housing mission to help create better human outcomes. We do it through housing—we don’t do it through food or clothing. We have the shelter mission. And we’ve chosen—because we’re in America—to focus on homeownership, because wealth building is very important to participate in this economy.
Nicholas Paulukow
And gain independence.
Andrew Szalay
Yes. Huge independence—a huge part of it.
Financial literacy and having some assets are key to being successful in this country. You mentioned earlier that you also do education. When they’re purchasing the home, you’re teaching them about finance and other things.
Tell us more about that. Yeah, we have a financial literacy program for our homebuyers. They do a certain number of sweat-equity hours that are in the classroom.
Andrew Szalay
Okay.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right now, we’re partnering with Truist on monthly English- and Spanish-language webinars. We just had the first one this past Wednesday. We’ll do the next one in September and run through at least January, if not March.
It’s a very good program covering the whole process of homeownership, finances, banking, and other tools. I hope we have more participation than just our Habitat homebuyers—who are core and need the program.
But it’s beneficial even if you think you know these things—you might not. It’s worth taking the time.
When I was back in Washington, D.C., at the Mortgage Bankers Association, I did—what was it called? I can’t remember the name—a volunteer program where you go to schools and do early financial-literacy education.
Nicholas Paulukow
Oh, I know what you’re talking about. I did that years ago.
Andrew Szalay
Something like that—it has a clever name. A lot of people in banking do this. I went several times and really enjoyed it. I actually learned things I should apply to my own life.
Are we teaching this in high school? Are we listening in high school? We’ve got more assets now—or things are tighter in our 20s, 30s, 40s.
We should probably go back. I highly recommend more people participate in these webinars.
Nicholas Paulukow
You’re educating and empowering them to own it, right?
You’re not just providing housing; you’re providing the ability to be sustainable. That’s amazing. Are there any myths or misconceptions about Habitat for Humanity that you often have to correct? What do you hear?
Andrew Szalay
Nick, of course—we don’t give away the house.
Nicholas Paulukow
All right.
Andrew Szalay
There is no such thing as a free house. That’s one of the most important things about how this program works. We’re teaching people to fish.
Nicholas Paulukow
Do you get that a lot—that people think you’re giving a house away?
Andrew Szalay
Yeah. It’s a shame. Another one is that we’re a humane society. We’re not doing Habitat for Animals. That’s another one I chuckle over.
Nicholas Paulukow
They capture “Habitat” as environmental.
Andrew Szalay
Which is a hot topic. I think this has been correcting a bit as Lancaster-Lebanon Habitat has become more active in building and expanding projects. We’re in the middle of a five-year building cycle where, by the end of next year, we’ll complete 30 homes for 30 families.
It’s called the Open Doors Project. If I had to simplify what we do into one thing: we make first-time homebuyers.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s amazing. In Lancaster and Lebanon counties, we talk about affordable housing all the time. Why is affordable housing so important? It comes up frequently.
Andrew Szalay
It’s popular right now largely because affordable housing is starting to affect the middle class.
It’s not just low-income families; it’s anybody who wants to buy a home. There aren’t enough houses on the market with the right number of bedrooms, the right scale, and what you need.
Does it need to be huge? That’s why we have a lot of huge houses that may be on the market—or older houses needing a lot of work that may not be worth it to you. What’s the most affordable house?
It’s the one you’re already in, most likely. People aren’t willing to move and provide inventory. As I said, Pew notes we’re ~45th in adding new units because local zoning restrictions make it difficult to add homes.
It’s hard for folks who want to own their first home to get access because of prices—which stretch budgets—and interest rates. We have folks who want to downsize into older, smaller, more affordable houses that might be ripe for first-time buyers if economics were different—but they can bring cash deals and pay more.
That elevates prices, too, because of scarcity.
Nicholas Paulukow
And Airbnb—there’s a trend of people buying homes, which then takes them away from first-time buyers.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah, that reduces available units, turning them into rentals or short-term rentals.
That creates pressure too. If we were able to successfully build—and if credit was more available—it probably wouldn’t be quite the same. Airbnbs/VRBOs are a factor, but if we could build at appropriate scale, I’m not sure it would matter.
That’s my gut—I don’t really know.
Nicholas Paulukow
You talk about volunteers and donations—do you ever get anyone to gift their home that then becomes somebody else’s?
Andrew Szalay
We used to. Home appreciation has been too great. It’s been very difficult to get homes donated for that reason.
When I was shopping at the beginning of the Homes for 30 Families project, we only had seven houses or sites to redevelop, and we needed a lot more in Lancaster and Lebanon. I remember looking at a list of houses under enforcement by the municipality. I’d go by and see they’re probably doing weekend-warrior fixes.
Definitely a lot of work—new windows inside the house, ladders—progress. They knew that post-pandemic prices were going up. Why offer it to Habitat or donate it? They weren’t going to take my price because they’d make more in equity.
So it wasn’t even on their radar to offer. I think that’s also holding back some houses from going on the market now.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s rough—especially since you have the volume and ability, but can’t get the home itself.
Andrew Szalay
That’s where I’m really grateful for donors who meet the challenge despite these things. We’ve acquired sites for 30 homes—although I’ll be back on the bikes pretty soon to do the next one.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow—yeah, it’s never-ending, right? Let’s talk about partnerships—with churches, businesses, and schools. What does a partnership look like?
Andrew Szalay
With churches, they love doing faith builds. That might be a whole-house sponsorship.
Highland Presbyterian funded $75,000 for a house on Howard Avenue in the city. It was their project—they were the lead.
We had some state and federal money too. But $75,000 was theirs.
Nicholas Paulukow
Really? That’s cool.
Andrew Szalay
We’ll also do smaller faith builds—maybe a week or two—where the church does a complete takeover of a site, doing both sponsorship (a collection) and coming out to volunteer. Again, bringing people together—and into neighborhoods you may not otherwise visit. They get to work alongside a homebuyer, which is fun.
Learning new skills.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, neat.
Andrew Szalay
Some congregations will just do general collections. Some are older and not comfortable coming out; they might volunteer at the ReStore retail side.
That can be gentler. I like that experience too—I love the hectic environment there.
With corporations, we’ll do Neighborhood Assistance Program funding, which is a tax credit. Because we’re doing affordable homeownership, it’s a 90% tax credit.
We’ve got corporations like B.R. Kreider—site work company—great long-standing partners.
Benchmark Construction—they’ve built many commercial facilities—they help as well. They’ll lend staff expertise on our committees.
Nicholas Paulukow
Wow.
Andrew Szalay
We’ll have whole takeovers. We’re also doing Women Build Week—the first one in mid-September.
There’s still room—it’s like $25 for an individual to sign up and contribute for the day.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s awesome.
Andrew Szalay
We’ll do corporate sponsorships too. At the beginning of November, we’re doing the Lancaster Women Build Week.
That one will be at the project across from the Turkey Hill Experience.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s neat.
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
Do any of the CTCs or Thaddeus Stevens get involved—or do they have their own projects?
Andrew Szalay
Usually, they’re working on their own projects.
However, I’d love to figure out—with Gene Duncan and others—how to get our project timelines to work with their academic calendars.
Nicholas Paulukow
I see.
Andrew Szalay
I think I’ve got a house that might work.
Nicholas Paulukow
I see.
Andrew Szalay
So I’ve got to follow that direction.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, they’ve always got different timing.
Andrew Szalay
They’ve got academic lessons and curriculum goals, and we want to serve a homebuyer on their buying and selection schedule.
Nicholas Paulukow
I see.
Andrew Szalay
Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah. That’s amazing. Let’s round out with your family. You said you’re a family man—you have two children.
Andrew Szalay
Yes.
Nicholas Paulukow
Do the kids follow your passion for this type of servant leadership?
Andrew Szalay
They are definitely fans of Habitat—and definitely all about the idea—mainly because I probably preach it often—that the most important thing isn’t what you do at the end of the day, but how everybody is taken care of in the work you’re doing. My daughter is a big tennis player.
So: kindness—saying thank you to coaches, players, hitting partners. We homeschool, too, so it’s a plus-two schedule. My son—with his art and his teachers—the thank-you notes and gifts to show appreciation.
Passing along some of my son’s art with a note—those things are important. Gratitude for who is helping shape and make your day—let alone your life. The experiential piece is so important, and I love the teachable moments: “Why do you think that person treated you like that?”
“Well, I don’t know—do you feel that? What was it from their perspective? What can we do to help them?”
Once we get over how we feel in the moment and look at it holistically—those are some of the best conversations.
Nicholas Paulukow
It’s amazing, because you don’t understand how much impact you have on people daily. I had a rude awakening—going to the grocery store, just smiling—and a man said, “You know what, I needed that today.”
I was like, that is unbelievable. You take for granted the kindness you can have every day—just a simple smile or hello.
Andrew Szalay
Nick, that reminded me—I’m smiling the whole time.
I tell this story to my kids. Out of college, I was walking through town and thought, “If I were Jesus, who would I save?” I’m looking around: people shopping, being vain, eating—whatever.
Very judgmental and cruel in that moment. I realized: nobody. I’m not sure I’d save myself.
And then you realize—He saved everybody. That was a gift to everybody, if you say yes.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s right.
Andrew Szalay
I don’t feel the need to evangelize the same way, but I do feel the need to show the light and keep doing this work. That’s the most important thing—find good work to do, follow through, and teach people—my kids, for example—that this is what we need to do. People need compassionate, empathetic, thoughtful people.
One of my curses is that when someone does something that violates someone’s ethics, I’m constantly looking at what they missed, or what they’re thinking and going through.
Nicholas Paulukow
And—was it intentional or not? What was the reason?
Andrew Szalay
Hurt people hurt people, I believe. Frustrated people have had tumult.
Nicholas Paulukow
Right.
Andrew Szalay
So what is that healing? The kindness, yeah.
Nicholas Paulukow
You triggered something. Over the years, we tried to understand why we got upset here in the organization—as a business.
Every time we sat down—before we solidified this—we started writing it down: “Oh my goodness, these are our core values.” Every time we feel our core values have been tested, or we’re not in alignment—it’s okay to be misaligned—but that’s not how we believe we should serve people.
We realized we were doing ourselves a disservice, because when we were emotional, we felt, “Why are we emotional?” It was a moment of, we’d better live these core values and incorporate them properly if we want them to follow through. You always see mission-based organizations where people love the mission, but we’re not a nonprofit—how can we bring that same serving in?
It’s difficult—you get criticism for standing up for what you believe in—not preaching, but putting “we before me” and going beyond the status quo. Some don’t necessarily want to do that. We realized that the hard way.
But that comes from the faith component. By the end of the day, Christ died for everyone’s sins, and He was killed for trying to help others—and still ends up on the cross.
Andrew Szalay
Nick, can I share a little about the guy who started Habitat for Humanity?
Nicholas Paulukow
Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew Szalay
One of the myths is that Jimmy Carter started the organization. He was a great spokesperson.
The person who started Habitat is Millard Fuller—and his wife, Linda—but Millard was the real force. He was a Southern, Atlanta-based trial attorney. He made a lot of money, and in the late ’60s or early ’70s, he decided to give it all up. He was frustrated.
He didn’t feel like he was doing the right thing, so he quit and went on a journey to figure out what to do. He went to visit friends. One stop was in Americus, Georgia—a very small town.
This is the ’60s—and in Americus there was a farm called Koinonia that started in the ’50s, by Clarence Jordan. It was a biracial commune farming together—think Deep South. Blacks and whites working together in a Christian community. They had crosses burned there.
They had a lot of violence around them. Millard came to have lunch with a friend, ended up hanging out for a while, met Clarence, and stayed all week.
Nicholas Paulukow
Really?
Andrew Szalay
It culminated later with a letter from Clarence to Millard that characterized everything they’d been talking about for a year or two—a Fund for Humanity. It would bring people together and fund the next project. It wasn’t centered on housing yet.
Sustainability—and nobody would get anything for free, but all would contribute—like the commune idea at Koinonia Farm. Time went on, and Millard and Linda were in Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo today) and built the first Habitat house.
They came back, and Millard would get on top of the table and—back then, code enforcement wasn’t what it is today, there were shacks—he would shout at churches and fundraisers: “No more shacks!” He was passionate. He would march in communities and draw attention to the state of affordable housing.
Things have improved in that respect, but now all these local Habitat affiliates started out—different logos, different models—but still low-income families, sweat equity, and affordable mortgages. Zero-interest at the time.
It still is in some places, and that was the movement. Edgar Stace—one of the guys who helped set up our first ReStore—was on the Habitat International board, and on September 11th he got a phone call from Millard. This shows Millard’s passion.
“I want to talk to you about your gift for Habitat.” Edgar said, “Millard, should you really be making this call today?” He said, “I know what’s going on, but as long as the water’s up and the sun’s coming up, I’m still going to be fundraising.” He wasn’t going to be stopped.
Nicholas Paulukow
It’s true. Each year I go to a retreat and left one with, “Find your purpose.” I connect my Catholic faith and ask: Why am I here? What did God put me here for?
He doesn’t write it down and tell me exactly, but it’s an everyday thing: Are you serving the people you’re supposed to? Are you giving back the way you should? Are you having the most impact? The small things matter.
I started the business and told my priest I felt guilty making money. He said, “God has given us different talents and treasures; you might have a talent to do that—but what are you doing with it?”
There are always lessons learned. It’s interesting how small things have the biggest impact that you never know about. As we wrap up, do you have any parting feedback or comments for the listeners today?
Andrew Szalay
Yeah.
It’s going to sound funny, but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned—having worked in advocacy and policy and housing—is all the limitations. I used to think: Why can’t we just build more homes and solve the problem—make the case, get enthusiasm? It’s amazing how complex everything is outside our control. We’re just trying to bring the Venn diagram a little tighter—build bridges and paths.
A lot more of it is money than I realized—some real limitations. Sometimes it’s alignment of policies and systems that need to be brought in. I felt weakened when I realized that, because there is a threshold that will hold us back from helping more families.
But I’m starting to realize this is everyone’s battle—trying to work in a good business. Your connections and clients, the resources you have, the knowledge—
We’re all trying to bring connections to make better outcomes. The quality of the conversations—and the money—has to be the focus. Quality conversations bring resources—often cash—to do land development, hire the right people, acquire land, and so forth.
The quality of those conversations lays the foundation for us to build higher, more, and farther.
Nicholas Paulukow
That’s amazing. I appreciate your time today.
Andrew Szalay
Thanks, Nick.
Nicholas Paulukow
As we wrap up, that’s another chapter of Servant Leader’s Library. Huge thank you to Andrew—a family man, a housing advocate (I love that), and the kind of leader who proves you don’t need a hard hat to build hope—just a big heart.
I hope today’s conversation reminded you that leadership isn’t about the corner office, but about the corners in your community. Then you’ve checked out the right book. I’m your host, Nicholas Paulukow, CEO of ONE 2 ONE, reminding you that—whether it’s technology or timber, security or shelter—it all comes down to building something worth protecting.
Until next time, keep leading, keep serving, and don’t forget to return your library books on time.
Want to Be the Next Guest?
Complete the sign-up form and share your servant leadership story!