“They came out in the freezing cold to work on my house,” says Colleen Stern of the Habitat repairs crew. “And most of them were women!”
Colleen, who is a wood carver herself, was delighted to hear young people outside her door wielding power saws and sledgehammers as they tore down and rebuilt her back steps. “They made it possible for me to stay in my home,” she says with tearful gratitude in her voice.
Colleen spent 35 years working as a caregiver for hundreds of clients. “I worked with people in hospice, too,” she adds with pride. During that 35-year career, Colleen raised a son with mental health challenges and created an animal sanctuary in the back yard of her Federal Way manufactured home. But several spinal injuries she sustained in her work ultimately left her with severe pain and unable to walk without a walker or one of her personally carved walking sticks. She couldn’t return to work, and, in fact, found herself in need of her own caregiver.
With very little income and living on her own, the natural deterioration on her 1966 vintage home got serious. After one emergency fall, paramedics had to break down the back door to reach Colleen and it remained broken. The back steps she’d built herself long ago were decaying and weren’t level with the door making them dangerous for her to navigate. The front porch was rotted through, and her back yard wildlife refuge had become overgrown prohibiting her from tending to her beloved squirrels, raccoons, birds, and rabbits. She simply could not afford the repairs on her fixed income.
Shortly after she applied for Habitat help, the repairs crew swooped in “like a pile of carpenter ants,” and “did a fantastic job on all the work.” Colleen has always been a hard worker, and she knew how to make all the repairs, but she was no longer physically able to do them herself. “So, I cooked for the crew,” she says noting with pride that her sourdough pizzas and vegan enchiladas were a big hit.
With partial funding from a $10,000 AARP grant, the Habitat crew not only fixed Colleen’s stairs in the front and back of her home, but they also cleared a pathway to her animal sanctuary and added grab bars in the bathroom along with a new higher toilet to accommodate her changing needs. And they added fencing around the stairs for safety.
Colleen’s was one of two Habitat homes that qualified for help from the AARP grant which focused on home modification and assistance to enhance safety for adult homeowners over age 50, allowing them to age in place. “So now I can walk right up to the door without tripping over,” says Colleen. “They fixed the door and gave me a lever style handle so I can open the door without falling off the porch. I couldn’t do that before. They were just so kind.”
If you know anyone in need of critical home repairs, please reach out to us here: Home Repairs – Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties
