Dream of owning home still coming true with Habitat
Virtual dedication held for 15 families with new places to live
Wearing blue rubber gloves, Emmanuel Nambo and his wife, Aida Mariano, signed the closing documents for their long-awaited home, the one they helped build themselves.
At the South Side offices of Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio, the firsttime homebuyers slid the paperwork underneath a plastic glass barrier back to Esperanza Ramon, the Habitat official overseeing the closing last week.
Through the same opening in the barrier, she handed them the keys to their new house.
The couple’s raised eyebrows were the only visible signs of their joy — pale-blue masks, a defense against the novel coronavirus, covered their smiles. Ramon’s face also was covered with a mask, but her eyes were twinkling, and it seemed she was smiling, too.
“We were happy with the response from everyone,” Nambo, 35, said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Without Habitat, we wouldn’t be able to have our home.”
The couple, who have three young sons, are one of 15 families whose celebration of their new Habitat homes was profoundly altered by the COVID-19 pandemic and governmental orders
barring public gatherings.
Dedication by video
The nonprofit’s spring house dedication is usually held in the neighborhood where the homes are built, bringing together the large group of people involved in the major achievement.
With social distancing requirements and gatherings limited, that wasn’t possible this year. So the organization staged a virtual dedication by video of the 15 new homes in the Lenwood Heights subdivision on the West Side, near Acme and Commerce. The video can be seen on YouTube.
“Our reasoning was to do everything we could to stay on schedule for our families,” said Stephanie Wiese, vice president of Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio. “These families did so much work, and we wanted them to have the finality of their work — be able to move into their homes and celebrate all of our partners who made this happen.”
Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio is an ecumenical Christian organization that works with low-income families to build affordable homes. As of January 2020, the nonprofit has built and sold 1,128 homes to qualified families. Its goal is still to build 50 homes this year, despite the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.
The homes have three or four bedrooms and two bathrooms each. They cost $75,000 to $80,000 apiece, purchases financed with 20-year, zero-interest loans.
Wiese said that until early March, more than 350 volunteers were at the site during construction days. The number of volunteers has since dwindled to a handful who are working with Habitat staff members to put the finishing touches on the 15 houses.
Each family that is going to buy a house is required to put in 300-plus sweat equity hours. That includes taking homebuyer readiness classes and working at the construction site — on others’ homes as well as their own.
Four of the 15 families have closed on houses so far. The remaining 11 closings are scheduled to be completed by early May.
Centers still open
Wiese said Habitat Home Centers are exempt from the stay-at-home orders and are open to members of the public in need of building materials. Social distancing practices are in place at all three centers: 311 Probandt, 5482 Walzem Road and 8125 Meadow Leaf Drive.
“We’re still looking for families who have a need for affordable homeownership,” Wiese added. “We’re still here for them.”
In the dedication video, Travis Eades, lead minister at San Antonio’s Oak Hills Church, blessed the new homes. The church is a sponsor of the building effort.
Brenda Uvalle, 26, who will be buying one of the homes, spoke on behalf of the 15 families.
She thanked the workers and volunteers for the hours they spent caulking, painting, hammering and building frames. She thanked volunteers for donating a minute, an hour, a day of their time. And she thanked the people who had written prayers with markers on wood beams throughout the homes as they were being built.
“On behalf of the families, I’d like to give a special and warm virtual hug to Habitat for all that you have done,” said Uvalle, a single mother, “and all you are continuing to do.”
April 4 was “landscape day,” the last day that members of the 15 families worked, as volunteers, on the respective houses that would be theirs on closing day.
Uvalle was alone that day, watering the lawn, when she realized how far she had come with the help of Habitat, an organization she said offered her a hand up, not a handout. Then the tears began to flow. “Wow,” she recalled saying, “we’re almost there.”
Nearby, Nambo had brought his son, who couldn’t help before because he wasn’t yet 14, the required minimum age. Now 14, he worked with his father to tend the lawn outside the house they would be calling home.
“He was able to put in some hours and dedication to that,” Mariano, 34, said of their son. “It made us very proud.”
“We’re still looking for families who have a need for affordable homeownership.”
Stephanie Wiese, vice president of Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio