Maria provided her children with a “forever home.”
Maria was at work when she got a phone call telling her she’d been accepted into our homebuyer program. “I started screaming I was so happy,” she remembers. Maria’s startled coworkers thought the building was on fire and they’d better evacuate. “I told them, ‘No, you don’t have to get out. I’m getting a house!”
Since then, Maria and her children have celebrated birthdays and Christmases in their home in our Rock the Block neighborhood. Her oldest son graduated from high school and now is a college student. Their neighbors have become their extended family.
“It’s not just a house,” Maria says. “It’s a better life.” Maria calls it a “forever home for me and my children … They always have a place they can come home to.”
The memory of the acceptance phone call is more than three years old but it seems like yesterday. Memories of the sore muscles that accompanied the hard work Maria invested earning her required 250 hours of sweat equity haven’t faded either. These are good memories. “You learn how to fix things when they break down,” Maria says of her sweat equity.
The journey to owning a Habitat home was not quick or easy, but Maria encourages others to apply, and keep at it if they are accepted. “Don’t give up,” she says.
Their home means stability and better future for their daughter.