Mayan P. (they/them) and Sarah D. (she/her) traveled to Washington from different places, but both came in search of a sense of belonging that they didn’t always feel back home. Along the way to finding community and buying their first home, they found each other.
Mayan grew up in a small town in Utah, which they found culturally stifling. Mayan has visited Seattle their whole life because their mom has three sisters who live here. Growing up in a small town in Utah, Mayan didn’t have access to a major city, and they wanted something bigger with more diversity. That desire and the family support here led Mayan to apply to Seattle University, and they moved here over a decade ago to attend college.
After a career as a social worker, Mayan has recently returned to school to study law. Mayan’s area of law focuses on the LGBTQ+ community: estate planning, name changes, second parent adoptions, and elder care.
“There’s a lot you can do through estate planning for lower income folks and people of color, who oftentimes lose generational wealth,” Mayan explains.
Sarah was born in Washington and moved to California when she was a baby, and where she stayed until she was 15. When her mom passed away when Sarah was a teenager, she moved to Idaho to live with her aunt and uncle. She spent three years there for high school. When she visited Seattle over a weekend in the summer, she felt at home.
Sarah adds, “It was a weird time being 18, getting a glance of the world, and then coming back home. I was ready to get out. This is the most beautiful place. I immediately felt like myself again. I grew up in small towns, so I had never experienced anything like this.”
Now, Sarah is a preschool teacher at Head Start, which is offered through Seattle Public Schools. While Washington state is a progressive area for paying teachers, Sarah still has to supplement her income. She has summers off, which she is very grateful for, but she usually works during them. Sarah loves teaching. Every day is new, and the kids are incredible. She currently works in South Park at a primarily Spanish-speaking school, and she has found it to be her favorite community that she has worked with so far.
When not teaching, Sarah fills her free time with reading and woodworking. While Mayan has had to put most of their hobbies on hold during school, they do enjoy spending time with friends, walking their dog Mavis, and longboarding with Sarah in the summer. In fact, skateboarding played an important role in the couple’s relationship. They look back fondly on lessons they took together as friends through Skate Like a Girl, a non-profit that encourages those traditionally not represented in skateboarding to take lessons and build community.
During one session, Mayan took off their wrist guards before the end and when they fell during their last run, broke their wrist. Sarah accompanied Mayan to the emergency room and spent the next six hours by their side. Sarah worked at a tamale shop at the time and generally had an excess of tamales on her most days. She brought them into the hospital, and the two shared them with another family.
While Mayan was in pain at the time, they consider this night a sweet memory they can now laugh about. It was one of the many great moments during the year of friendship before they began dating.
—
While the couple liked the location of their West Seattle home before Habitat (and the sliver of water they could see out of their second-story apartment window), they struggled to keep up with the ever-increasing rent. With a median home price of $910,000, buying a house in Seattle felt completely out of reach.
Mayan describes the either-or situation the couple felt locked in, “The reality is: I have a lot of student loans, especially with law school. Basically, we could either save for a house, which probably wouldn’t be here because it’s too expensive, or we could save to potentially have a kid, which unfortunately costs a lot of money for us. It felt like we had to pick one.”
Mayan’s aunt, who works in housing, told them about an opening at Habitat SKKC’s Olympic Ridge building, and suddenly the equation changed.
“We could potentially have both things and stay in Seattle, which is really wild, and not something I think either of us ever thought was possible,” Mayan adds.
Sarah never thought she would own a home. Growing up, her family never did, and moving from food service to teaching, it didn’t feel financially possible.
She continues, “This is our place—we felt that from the first minute we got here. We knew it’s our place, and we didn’t want to move away.”
—
While moving through the Habitat program, Sarah and Mayan spent their volunteer hours working at the Southcenter Habitat Store. Volunteering at the store suited them well since they both love new experiences and meeting new people. While they felt a little nervous at first because they didn’t know what the work entailed, they went into the experience with open minds, and they found that the store staff opened their arms to them in return.
“Teresa was amazing and made us feel right at home,” Sarah explains. Assistant Store Manager Teresa Elliott gave them big tasks to do as a team since they always volunteered together. This included assembling furniture and creating vignettes throughout the store.
Now moved into their new home, the couple looks forward to movie nights in their new living room and filling their home with more books from their neighborhood bookstores.
“At the end of the day, we get to live in Capitol Hill, which is definitely more queer than West Seattle. Also, my aunt and my mom live close by, and I go to school down the street. We get to save a lot of money and still be in an environment that we feel comfortable in,” Mayan describes their rapidly changing lives.
Home can look like a lot of things, but at its core, it provides a feeling of comfort and safety. Together, the couple has felt welcome in Seattle, where Mayan feels safe holding hands with Sarah in public. With their new Habitat home, they can put down roots in this inclusive city and help invite the next wave of transplants looking for a welcoming place to call home.
