It’s been over five years since Extreme Makeover: Home Edition aired its final episode in 2012, but its host Ty Pennington is finally speaking out about backlash that followed the show.
The reality show ran for 200 episodes across nine seasons from 2003-12, with the central premise being Pennington and a large group of builders with volunteers helping the less fortunate by building new, state-of-the-art houses for them. Each family that was chosen usually had just been through a natural disaster or had a family member fighting a life-threatening disease and were in need of a helping hand.
Videos by PopCulture.com
However the show had a persistent criticism that the new housing would cause the ensuing property taxes to skyrocket, making it hard for some of the families to keep the homes years after the fact.
Pennington, in a recent interview with The Wrap, assured the the show never merely packed up and left the families after helping them and that the criticism was unwarranted.
“On ‘Extreme Makeover Home Edition,’ we did absolutely phenomenal things,” Pennington said. “And honestly I don’t know if there will ever be a show quite like that — that on network television, there’s a show that actually benefits a family. On television, that’s just unheard of. Let’s face it, it’s about ratings, it’s about ad sales — it’s about all those sorts of things.”
“Not only do we build a brand new house, we usually paid off the college tuition for their children — basically left them without any debt whatsoever,” Pennington continued.
“But yes, the property tax probably went up a little because the value of the house went up. There’s a couple of stories that families lost their home,” Pennington continued. “We left them with a financial adviser. However, if the family chooses to triple-mortgage their house to start a business that they’ve never done before just to see if they can get into it, that’s their own demise. That’s how you lose your home, is you’re like, ‘Oh, let’s use it as a lottery ticket and see what we can get out of it. And then you lose it because you can’t make the payment.”
Pennington blamed media outlets for trying to spin the good the show did into a negative.
“But that’s what press does,” Pennington said. “They were like, ‘This is too good to be true, what is really happening?’ But with ‘Extreme’ it really was that good.”
Pennington will be involved in the revival of Trading Spaces, which returns April 7.
