home owner

Alexander and his wife Nadiia lived in Moldova, where Alexander worked hard to provide for his wife and their 10 children. In 2009, they were able to come to the U.S. with refugee status. It has taken them some time to adjust to their new style of life, especially Alex and Nadiia who lived the majority of their adult lives in Moldova.

The family lived in Ohio for a short time and it was difficult for them; the weather was a challenge, and the area in which they lived was less diverse than what they were looking for. They moved to Seattle after visiting family and friends living in the area. They really liked Washington State, and thought it would be a nice place to raise their family. The younger children – Svetlana, Inna, Daira, and Alex- lived with their parents in an apartment in Federal Way. Space was tight in their apartment and the family had no concrete plans in place to become homeowners. Alexander was depressed, work was scarce and the family was considering going back to Moldova. Thus they were very excited to learn about Habitat for Humanity’s home ownership program.

Once selected, Nadiia and Alexander worked diligently alongside community volunteers and Habitat staff to build a home for themselves and their children. While volunteering with Habitat, they continued to be actively involved in their church community, helping with bake sales, teaching Sunday School classes, and doing church repairs (Alex spent one whole day repairing the church’s roof). Alexander says, “We have always taught our children to give back to the community in big and small ways.”

Since their participation in Habitat’s home ownership program, Alexander and Nadiia have been able to pay for their older children’s college tuition after saving more money than they were able too while renting. Their younger children are able to concentrate on school better than before and the family’s relationship with their neighbors have deepened. Nadiia has a garden where she plants flowers and vegetables to share with their neighbors. “We have more relationships now, we invite them to our home or we have a potluck… Habitat for Humanity homeowner’s program has given me, and my husband Alexander, and my family, hope and optimism for a better future. Habitat has shown us that everything is possible. We are never alone in our struggles as long as we keep faith and hope.”

Candy’s family was one of the founding families of Issaquah, having developed the neighborhood in 1887. She and her children were the fifth generation to grow up in the area. She hadn’t thought about leaving before but she struggled as a single parent supporting her children after her divorce and didn’t have a lot of other options. When she applied to Habitat for Humanity, she was a custodian working for the Issaquah school district. Since taking over ownership of her home, she’s become a supervisor and she can see the difference. “My employees can’t afford to live here, close to where they work,” she said. Trying to find housing in Issaquah was tough, especially when it came to renting.

For eight years, her family rented the attic of an old home from the 1890’s. “All of us were squished in two attic bedrooms. So yeah, it was tight, but you know, I was a single parent and that’s all I could afford… The kids were getting bigger, and it was getting tight, so there’d be fighting… It was ok when they were all little, but as they got bigger it was a little cramped.” Still, Candy only moved her family out of the attic because her landlord decided to rent the space to his daughter.

Candy ended up hearing about Habitat for Humanity from the principal of the school she worked at. After Habitat reached out to Issaquah Elementary, soliciting applications from local families for a housing unit they were building on donated land, the principal encouraged Candy to apply. And so in 1994, Candy received one of the first Habitat for Humanity homes in the area, built by the pre-merger East King County chapter. Alongside Candy and the Habitat volunteers, all kinds of people from the community turned out to help build her house. “The whole community bought into my house. The teachers did some work, helped paint it. One of the baseball coaches put the carpet in, my ex-landlord put the plumbing in… my mom and my dad had just retired, so my mom had him come down every day, like a job. And so he came every day and then my mom, a couple times a week, would make a lunch and bring it down so we would have something to eat… the mayor worked on my house… all of Issaquah helped build my house.”

The relief that came afterwards allowed Candy and her children to refocus their energy on things they hadn’t been able too before. “It gave me the opportunity to take extra classes, and then I applied for the supervisor job, which I probably wouldn’t have. I would have stayed a custodian… I was able to do it because I was secure, when you think you’re going to have to move, you’re not going to sign up to take classes… After I moved in, and stuff was settled, I was just like ‘I can do this.’… “My daughter said it made her more comfortable being in college, when she wasn’t worried about me and the house payments, and stuff like that… it kind of made everything just progress.”

Candy has been able to provide support to her children and grandchildren as they progress through college. She’s excited about retiring in her home since she paid it off in 2014 and looks forward to travelling more among other things. “I’ll have lots of time to garden!” She even hopes to have her ashes scattered around the big tree in her backyard. “My favorite thing is every day in summer, I get home, and take a nap in the hammock… It’s beautiful, with the green grass and the plum trees. It’s a nice, zen place to be.”

Tamara was living out of a single room in her mom’s house with her three children when she applied to Habitat for Humanity. Previously, she lived in section 8 housing with her son’s father in an unstable and toxic relationship and when he passed she was no longer eligible for the program. She didn’t have any other plans for attaining stable housing. “I was just going to be at my mom’s. I was going to try and purchase a home, but I wouldn’t have been ready ever. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. If I would have had a mortgage for a thousand dollars, I wouldn’t have survived. I probably would have lost it by now, because of the economy and taxes to pay. I’m still living paycheck to paycheck, but [my home is] affordable.”

This was Tamara’s third attempt at owning a Habitat home. She’d made a promise to herself years ago, while doing work in the Bellevue area, that she would make that a part of her future. “I was working for Union Gospel Mission, and Habitat had just started building these places. And I walked all the way up this hill, and they had the condos over there, the first ones they built. And I looked up, and I said, ‘one day, Lord.’ I said ‘one day, Lord, I will have one of these’.” Each time she was turned down, Tamara worked to improve the negative aspects of her application. She paid her debts off and focused on raising her credit scores. And even though Tamara has been in her house for over ten years she’s still working to get better at budgeting and maintaining her scores.

Tamara still comes up against struggles as a homeowner but she’s been able to make it work. The financial commitment has been an obstacle she’s overcome. Since she moved in, her HOA dues are six times what they were but she wasn’t going to let anything happen to her home. “If I was living somewhere else I don’t think I’d still have a house because of the mortgages… Because of all the high cost of living right now, I wouldn’t be here. I probably would be still at my mother’s house. I wouldn’t be here. So I am very blessed to be living in a habitat for humanity home in Seattle!”

While some Habitat families eventually sell their houses back to Habitat and move into different phases of their lives, Tamara doesn’t plan on going anywhere. “Why should I give away what I have? No! This is like a dream-vacation home, but it’s my house!… This is spacious. I’ve been here ten years, this here, it doesn’t get old… the whole space just grows with time. It never gets old to me.” Her house has given her the freedom to move at her own pace and even start her own business teaching flagger certification classes for construction workers. She’s learned the benefits of having a routine in different areas of her life and to set an example for her children, who are now grown and starting their own families. It’s allowed them to see her succeed and she hopes to empower her three grandchildren in the same way while continuing to support her children when they need it. “I want to help them to grow in their goals and their dreams, what they want to do, what they want to be… I want them to have whatever they want for themselves. They can get it and not feel like the world is on their shoulders.”

Hersi built a stable life for himself before he sought safety in the U.S. He worked for a bank for 10 years, attended college in the U.S. and returned to his home country of Somalia to work for the United Nations Development Program. After dedicating 11 years to his career with the UN, Hersi had to make the life-changing decision to leave Somalia. “People were killing each other. It was bad. It was so bad. So I thought… I just couldn’t stand that kind of killing. I didn’t want to kill anybody.” Hersi and his family locked the doors to their home and left everything behind.

They bounced around for a while, moving from Kenya to Pennsylvania, before settling down in the Seattle area. When they left Somalia, his oldest son was 14. By the time they got to Seattle, his eldest was an adult and no longer lived with them. And yet, there were still seven remaining family members between Hersi, his wife Asha, and their five children, to find appropriate housing for. They were able to find a 3 bedroom home in the Rainier Beach area but there was mold, plumbing issues, a lot of leakage and the rent was backbreaking. “I didn’t know exactly how long we would be able to continue paying at that rate. And I was trying to work, and work, and work, but it was all the time short.”

Hersi remembered hearing about Habitat for Humanity from a group of Mennonites during his time in Pennsylvania and knew his family had a need for it. By 1997, Hersi and his family moved into their Habitat home. “It was a good experience… It’s like, you know, you feel like you’re building your house. You’re building your house. You think that way and you think, ‘Wow I’m really something. I know how to build a house’.” The Habitat partnering process took some adjusting to, but Hersi and his wife knew their family would get a lot out of it. Over time, their dedication to the process grew. Their interests in finishing all their courses increased and they would defend the Habitat partnering process to friends who did not understand it. “They said they had never seen anything like it, you know, saying ‘if they want to give you a house, why don’t they give your house? Why are you building your house?’ And we said, ‘But we have to!… We can’t just have a house.’” These same friends donated construction hours to Hersi’s family and later became interested in partnering with Habitat themselves.

In the 10 years that Hersi has been in his Habitat home, he and his wife have raised children who can support themselves and have finished some level of education. Hersi has spent most of the last decade on the board of his community’s HOA. They’ve overcome language barriers, resolved disputes together and banded together when a fire affected multiple homes. “When you’re in a community… if you don’t own a home [in] that community, you feel that you don’t belong in it… You could be on the move the next day, to another place, and another place, and another place or another state. It’s like, you know, being a farmer… if you are a farmer, the land belongs to you, you stay there forever, and you feel one with that land. The land belongs to you. So around this place, that community, like a farmer, you care about it. You really care about it—when you own a home, it’s like that. You care about the community. You feel like being a part of the community; you think you belong here, because you have your home here, after all… It really plants you deeper into the community.”