Habitat for Humanity founder Fuller dies at 74

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Millard Fuller, who founded the U.S. charity Habitat for Humanity, a pioneering organization that builds houses for low-income families around the world, died on Tuesday at age 74, his organization said.

Fuller set up Habitat in 1976 to help people too poor to qualify for conventional mortgages own their own homes. The charity relied on volunteers and donations to build simple but decent houses for people and only charged at cost.

Families living in Habitat homes did not pay interest on their mortgages and, partly as a result, Fuller is credited as a global leader of the affordable housing movement.

Habitat says it has housed 1.5 million people in 3,000 communities around the world. Fuller was fired by the organization in 2005, in part because of allegations of sexual misconduct toward a female employee.

He later founded the Fuller Center for Housing.

A Christian, Fuller developed the idea behind Habitat first in the U.S. state of Georgia, then while working as a missionary in Mbandaka, a city in western Congo.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter donated money and time to Habitat, organizing high-profile annual week-long projects to build homes for the organization around the world.

President Bill Clinton awarded Fuller the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, the highest civilian award in the United States.

He was "one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known," Carter said in a statement. Fuller died after a short illness, the Fuller Center said on its Web site.

(Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Jim Loney and Todd Eastham)