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Habitat for Humanity makes dream come true for local family

Teresa Davis and her three teenage sons have been searching for a place to call their own. As a single mother, Davis said it’s not easy saving enough money for a down-payment on a house, so the dream of home-ownership was a distant one.
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(Leith Dunick, tbnewswatch.com)

Teresa Davis and her three teenage sons have been searching for a place to call their own.

As a single mother, Davis said it’s not easy saving enough money for a down-payment on a house, so the dream of home-ownership was a distant one.

Thanks to Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay, her dream was realized.

The Davis family last month took ownership of their new home, the left side of a Hodder Avenue duplex built by Habitat with the help of volunteers from Gillons Insurance.

Being a homeowner is such a proud moment, she said on Monday, celebrating World Habitat Day with some of the volunteers who made it possible.

“Everybody would like to have a home of their own,” she said. “Renting doesn’t give you a sense of putting roots down and having something to call your own is a sense of permanence and a sense of independence and freedom from the rental cycles.”

Habitat builds the houses through fundraising, then provides mortgages to selected homeowners who meet a variety of strict criteria, including the ability to pay the loan back. The goal is to keep payments to no more than 25 per cent of the household income.
Davis can’t thank them enough.

“The efforts that all the volunteers and everybody that’s involved with this is just immeasurable. It’s wonderful that they’ve put out their time and energy and all that stuff for virtual strangers. It’s just a wonderful organization and a wonderful opportunity for families like mine,” she said.

“Thank you just doesn’t seem like enough.”

Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay CEO Diane Mitchell said the build wasn’t without its challenges. For a time it appeared the money just wasn’t there, but thanks to the generosity of a pair of anonymous donors the financial problem was solved.

Construction also took longer than expected, although Mitchell said they promised to get the families into their new homes by the start of the school year and succeeded.

“We’ve had road work going on here. It took us a year-and-a-half to build the two houses, which is much longer than we would have liked or have expected it to be. But they are done and the happy part is the families got in before the school year and started school in their proper schools and that’s exciting to us,” Mitchell said.

The organization is planning to build its next home next year on Finlayson Street.

Mitchell said the need for affordable housing is always there.

“We have a lot of families that are spending well over 50 per cent of their income to be able to pay for their housing needs,” she said.

 





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